Another Day

Common Sense may not be overly forthcoming today. Lack of sleep, necessity of writing self-referential PHP and navigation, and still fixing the utterly abortive site that I was pissed off with a couple of days ago. In short, today is NOT a good day. It may improve. It may not. Only time will tell.

However, in one minor high-point, the tickets arrived today for the Massive Attack gig in Bristol. Not much of a high-point really, is it?

Analysis

“Blunkett’s banging on about ID cards again. Why don’t we just tell him we’ve all got one – he’ll never know.”

Scaryduck analyses humour. Truly worthy of reading – just don’t do so at work.

Ouch

I pretty much guarantee that every man who reads this story will wince a fair amount. However, I hope everybody will also find it as amusing as I did. Otherwise I have a sick sense of humour…

Muttering

I’d just like to say that some “professional” web designers should be shot. Ideally they would then be incincerated in flaming cow dung, and then it would be arranged that syphilitic transvestite donkeys would then piss on the flames. It’s that kind of day.

One of the offshoot PFI pieces of crap that this council/government loves so much decided to do a website. All well and good – except they went to what they say was a “professional” web designer, and I suspect was in fact a 13year old with a PC and a copy of M$ Publisher.

This gonk decided that – as well as having what can only be described as “not a fucking clue” about information design and navigation – it would be great to have every single page done using an image map. Hey, that’ll make things easy for navigation and the like. And any links to other pages can just be done by designating a hot-spot in the image.

However, it also means that, when it comes to converting this site into something approaching usable, it’s nigh-on im-fucking-possible to get the content out of the site using copy/paste, and instead have to retype the fucking lot. Because you can’t highlight the text in an image and pull it out. (And, for the smart-arse techies in the audience, for once OCR doesn’t work properly either)

So, it’s back in the land of “create it all from scratch”. And if I ever discover which twadgeknacking fluntcap “designed” this abortion in the first place, I’m going to be in Strangeways before the end of the week.

Nearly There

Ye Gods this is frustrating. Today’s log report puts the page impressions at 199,000. Aaargh. Only another 1,000 to go! I’m currently considering a post about the changes that’ve happened since d4d™ started properly back on August 9^th 2002, or perhaps it’ll just be “over the last 100,000 page impressions” – time will tell. It’s hard to believe I’ve been blithering on for so long already…

Parenting

Bloody hell, I’m going to be a Godfather. Now there’s a shocker. And no, I don’t mean as in the film, but instead the classical role.

A good friend of mine is due by the end of the month – it’s not been an easy ride through the pregnancy, for one reason and another, but she’s come through it all, and now we’re heading towards the drop-date. Today she asked if I’d be Godfather to the new baby – and I can’t deny it, while smobgacked that anyone’d choose me for that role, I’m also deeply deeply chuffed.

The second half of 2004’s certainly looking like it’ll be interesting!

Hopper Exhibition – Part Two

No, there aren’t two parts to the exhibition. But as Pat asked what I thought of it, well, I’d best get on with it, hadn’t I?

Personally, I loved seeing the exhibition. I’d have enjoyed it more if it were anywhere but Tate Modern, I suspect. I find that other than the Turbine Hall itself, the entire place is about 10° too warm, and when that’s added to shitloads of other people, I just want to get round and get out. In fact, the Milennium Bridge is in a great place for that, as wandering over the bridge after being in Tate Modern is a great way of coming back down to a somewhere-near-normal body temperature.

The odd thing was that I’d always thought his paintings were somehow bigger. Nighthawks would pretty much fit on an A3 piece of paper, whereas I’d always imagined it to be much larger. I agree with Pat’s comment that it would be a better exhibition if there were more of the sketches and notes on view as well as the paintings themselves, but then, nothing’s perfect.

All told, I thought it was a fantastic exhibition, and well worth seeing. I’d hate to miss it, if it’s going to be another twenty years before a similar one comes round again. But if you get the chance, see it either first thing in the morning, or on one of the late-night openings. It’s on ’til 5th September, so there’s still plenty of time to see it. Do so.