Spitting Image

Apparently, it’s possible that Spitting Image will make a return to TV screens. It would take a fair amount of money to get the show back (“a seven figure investment would be needed”) as all the puppets would have to be re-made and so on – but I know I’d love to see the show come back.

And I can only dream of what they’d make of Blair, Prescott, Brown et al.

Blogrolling Redux

Further to what I was saying on Saturday about Blogrolling being a bit up it, I’ve just read their News section, and it turns out that yes, there was a whacking big crash, and an upgrade that happened about a week earlier than it should’ve done.

Fair play to them, and it seems to be back up and running OK again.

Redesign Questions

OK, I’ve got a fair amount of the basics done for a redesign of d4d™. It’s not too radical (hey, I’m sad, and still like the basic *cough* “design” of the site) at first sight, but there’s a lot of new stuff in the background.

But now comes the techie part – concentrate! Further to various comments (you know who you are) while I’m used to the yellow, it’s still offensive (and non-work-subtle) for many people, so I’m going to bite the bullet and create a colour-switcher. There are two options for it.

One : Use a cookie-based system. While this won’t hold any personal data (and in fact is likely to just hold a value for a PHP variable name) what I need to know is how many people would be OK with accepting cookies, whether more people have them turned off than on, that kind of thing.

Two :The second option is somewhat subtler, but in concept perhaps slightly more intrusive. I’m thinking of using a database, listing the IP address, and any colour choice listed against that IP. This is well geeky, and I’m currently on theory-only concept, but it would mean that people reading d4d™ from work wouldn’t need to worry about cookies. Again, no further personal data would be held – it would purely be “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx : Blue”, but how do people feel about that as a concept?

And given the choice, which would you prefer?

Berkshire

Ah, that was a grand weekend. Meeting people I’ve wanted to for quite a while, coupled with beer, a garden, Trivial Pursuit, barbeque, and loads of sun. Oh, and some idiot banter, and a couple of epic faux pas, for which I’ve apologised already. (Bless you, my child) Everyone was great, and it’s been an utter pleasure to meet them.

And then today was more sun and garden, then meeting up with one of my oldest friends (old as in “duration of friendship”, not as in “years”) for lunch and general putting the world to rights. Of course, the four-plus hour train-ride home wasn’t much fun, but I still got some stuff done, and now I’m home and utterly knackered.

Ah yes

Ah, that was it. Is it me, or is BlogRolling having problems registering when a page has been altered? I normally use their ping page in order to make sure d4d™ comes up as updated, but since Thursday apparently none of the blogs I read have changed. Which doesn’t sound right at all.

Brain-spasm

Don’t you just hate it when you know you were wanting to write something, and whatever it was just dive-bombs right out of your brain again? That’s what’s just happened.

I’d got something in my head to write about, then the landlord came round for a flying visit – as predicted, it really was a “check the walls are all there, and that nothing’s been trashed” walkthrough – and I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to gibber about. It’s frustrating. I’ll remember what it was halfway down the line to Berkshire, and then forget again just in time to post it.

Blah

There are times I hate living in Manchester. Went to bed at about 2am – OK, that one I can’t pin on Manchester, particularly. By 3am there was some off-his-head scallie wandering around on the street outside yelling into his phone (I assume) and being a pain in the arse.

Eventually a passing police car stops and basically asks him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, particularly as he was also wobbling down the center of a fairly busy road. Knobby then assumes that someone called the police, and proceeds to spend the next two hours walking up and down kicking on gates and walls, throwing stuff at doors, that kind of thing. At this point logic would dictate “i’m doing this and no-one’s called the police back, so perhaps they didn’t when I was just being a loud obnoxious gobshite” – but no, with various yells and bashes, the entire street is getting hassle for (I assume) broaching his human rights to be a cunt at 3am.

Eventually someone obviously did call the plods back (can’t think who that might’ve been. Honest. *whistles innocently*) at which point they bounced his head off the door of the police car. 5 am. I’ve had three hours sleep. And once my fucking useless darling lovely landlords have visited to check I haven’t blown the place up, I’m off down to Berkshire. In short, right now, I’m fit for fuck all.