Fare thee Well

This’ll mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside Manchester, so if you’re not interested, just move along, there’ll be something else here soon.

Over the last four years or so, I’ve been a regular reader of City Life (Warning, the site appears to utterly bork Opera), the Manchester equivalent of Time Out. Next week, they’re relaunching with (another) new design, so this week’s edition is a bit of a milestone. One feature I’ve read almost religiously every week has been Phil Griffin’s Archisnap, a small feature that each issue has looked at a certain building or development around Manchester. Very bobble-hatted on occasion, but always passionate about the development of both architecture and Manchester, it’s always been a good read, whether I’ve agreed with the author or not. A small archive of them is available from Cube gallery – I’d love to see a full web archive of them at some point.

Through Griffin’s column, I’ve learned about bits of the city that no-one would really notice without having them pointed out, and also about buildings I’ve noticed, but had no idea of the history behind them. The last Archisnap is in this week’s City Life. It’ll be sorely missed.

Referrers

I don’t normally list any of the referrers to this site (other than bizarre Google searches, of course), but I’m intrigued about what brought the Department of Elder Affairs, Tallahassee, United States scurrying to this site earlier today.

At first I wondered why there was a department dealing with Elder trees, but now I realise I’m wrong. All the same, I’d love to know what brought them here.

Bollocks to it

Ah, the joys of favicons. Having norked about a bit, and added in a line of code to the HTML, it now works in most browsers. Except IE, which is (of course) doing its own thing, and just being a pain in the arse. So sod it, I’m not going to mess about any more for now, and work on the theory “It’s there, it’s just not always visible in borked browsers“

And at least I didn’t delete my entire weblog along the way. *Grin*

Bureaucracy

Gah, I’ve decided that Companies House are the bureaucrats it’s OK to loathe. On occasion I check out my company details on their site – not for any good reason, but more to make sure that I’m not missing anything, as they’ve been known to be utterly incompetent cunts in the past. (See also : the links listed here. ) This time, it’s fortunate that I did check it – as yet again, the form for my Annual Return hasn’t been received here, yet it’s due in at the end of the week. And what would have happened if I hadn’t sent it in by Friday? I could be sued by Companies House.

Now, I’m not saying there’s a conflict of interest here, but surely if the inefficiency of Companies House can subsequently bring extra money (in the form of legal costs, fines etc.) into the coffers of – um – Companies House, then there’s something wrong with that equation…

As it is, I’ve now done it all online, and sent it in. I just hope I don’t go through the farce of previous years about whether the motherfuckers have received it or not. I may back myself up, and send in a copy by post too. After all, I’ve already paid the £15 for the online one, so it shouldn’t be a problem to duplicate it…

*mutter* *snarl* favicons

I love the idea behind favicons. What’s a favicon? The little picture up on the titlebar beside the name of some websites, in some browsers. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a yellow square with “d4d” on it while looking at this site. But you may not.

And that’s what’s frustrating about them – they’re not standards-compliant, and there’s not even any compatibility between browsers about what works best. IE supposedly likes them, Opera doesn’t, and Firefox sometimes likes them and sometimes doesn’t. No-one seems able to decide whether they should be 16×16 or 32×32 pixels, 8bit, 16bit or 32bit colour, or really bloody anything.

Over the weekend, I realised that the website for my company didn’t have a favicon – it’s nothing special, doesn’t alter the functionality, but I do like the idea of favicons, particularly when using tabbed browsing, such as in Firefox. It makes each tab instantly recognisable. Well, it does so long as the keffing things work.

Of course, for some reason (as yet still unknown) the favicons I was using didn’t work. No idea why, and now it’s working again (although on an older version than the one that’s now been loaded onto the site) and I’m still utterly clueless about why it’s happening. Grrr. Why is it that it’s always the small “simple” things that take up so much time?

Colour Me Stunned

In yet another “File Under : Sherlock, Shit, No” moment, the Mental Health Foundation has published the results of a survey today.

And the conclusion of this survey? Low moods can be beaten by having someone to talk to, or by being hugged. I kid ye not. Now, how amazed are you by this revelation? I know it left me utterly flabbergasted. To think, just having a hug (or a shag) makes you feel better. Fucking hell, Holmes, you’ve got something there. It might even be a solution!

I’m far more interested in knowing how many depressives considered “punching the twat who’s just said ‘cheer up, luv, it might never ‘appen!’” as a viable option for its mood-lifting properties.

On The Edge

One thing that a lot of people don’t know about me is that once I hit a certain point in the depression/stress cycle, all I do is sleep. It’s an evasion manoeuvre, I know – and it’s the big signpost for me that things have gone Far Enough. (Intentional capitals) This Easter weekend has demonstrated that part of me quite impressively. I’ve slept for about 45 hours over four days. If anyone had been here to try and wake me up before I was ready, I suspect that (as has happened before) I wouldn’t have woken up. On previous occasions that’s worried people enough that I’ve woken up in hospital – no memory of getting there, nor of paramedics etc. using what can only be described as painful methods of rousing an unconcscious patient. Which is, of course, stressful in itself.

Thankfully, this time there’s been no-one around, and I’ve just been able to sleep for the time that my brain/body required. I feel almost human for it – my body-clock is still utterly wazzed, but that’s nothing unusual. Now we’ll just see how the return to normality (or at least my version of it) goes tomorrow.