Posted: Fri 9 April, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, People, Photography |
Holy Jumping Jesus – sometimes I’m really glad I have no real interest in (or concept of) fashion.
Well, if this little lot are fashionable then I’m deeply glad I’m not.
Posted: Wed 7 April, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Creativity, People, Script Frenzy, Weirdness, Writing |
Sometimes it’s really quite scary seeing just how disturbing some bunnysuits are.
Bizarrely, I was doing some research on a writing idea to get me to that site. That’s quite worrying in itself…
Posted: Sat 3 April, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Norfolk, People, Thoughts |
One thing I find weird living out here in Norfolk is the times people get work done.
All three winters we’ve been here, a noticable number of properties get their roofs redone. I’ve never quite understood that – surely it’s better to get the roof of your house redone in summer when the weather’s better, rather than in winter when it’s cold, wet, snowy and nasty?
The same seems to be true of chimney work – there have been several chimney-stacks this year with scaffolding around them, and again I’d probably rather work on them during summer when the fires aren’t lit and there’s no need for the extra heat.
Of course I realise I’m not at all practical and there’s probably some other very good reasons for roofing to be done in winter. I hope someone can explain it to me.
Posted: Wed 31 March, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, People, Weirdness |
Ouch. The mind boggles as to why you’d do this to yourself…
Just why?
Posted: Sun 21 March, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, People, Work-related |
Things have been a bit quiet here of late, mainly because I’m snowed in work time with one big project that’s dealing with a metric fuckload of data coming in by XML. It’s aq nightmare in many ways – and also decidedly scary because of the sheer amount of personal data involved in each record.
Additionally, the company that we’re connecting with are – to be polite – not all that helpful. I got to see their documentation before we started the project, and that looked OK. However, the documented examples don’t actually match up in any useful recognisable form with what we’re getting out of the process.
During this week, among other things, the company has realised that the documentation they sent us initially was out of date – two versions out of date, no less. So they said they’d send the latest/greatest version. And then sent the self-same two-versions-out-of-date documents. The file actually has the version number on it, so it’s not (or at least you wouldn’t have thought it was) rocket science in the least to be able to send the correct documentation.
Once we’d got the up-to-date documentation, I queried the data coming back from the company, as it didn’t match the examples given. Oh yes, I was told, “We can’t put in examples for everything.“. Yes, you can – particularly when it’s what your customers are using to develop their interactions with. Random data format changes aren’t helpful either – “We’ve stopped sending the numbers with four decimal places – yes, we know our documentation says we do this, but we don’t any more”
As you can imagine, it’s making life pretty difficult. There’s a lot to do still, and I can’t rely on the information from the original company. Always a joy.
Posted: Sat 6 March, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Introspective, People, Sociable, Thoughts, Work-related |
The bowling night on Thursday was actually quite a lot of fun – helped by the fact our team won, but still, quite a laugh all round. I know, you lot never expected me to say something like that about a work-based social event. Truth be told, neither did I.
I do find bowling fascinating though. Any time I go, there’s always at least one lane of people with absolutely no fucking clue whatsoever about throwing a ball down the lane. Pretty much all the time, they’re in the lane next to one with at least one decent person playing – by which I mean someone who knows what they’re doing, and scores over about 125 or so in a game. Not perfect, but a damn sight better than the people next to them.
And yet those people with no clue never (and I do mean bloody never) take a look at the person next to them, and see if they can figure what they’re doing wrong/differently. It’s bizarre.
When I first went to bowling – admittedly, many moons ago now – I did exactly that. I watched some decent people and figured out most of it from there. It’s not difficult, just watch and learn. As a result, I’m not bad now, (I tend to average around 110 – 120 per game) pretty consistent in how I bowl, and if I went more regularly I’d probably be a lot better. (Which might be something to think about doing, I don’t know yet) There were other people on Thursday a lot better than me – and others a lot worse. So I’m probably somewhere in the midle.
But even there, the people who were really bad at it didn’t seem to want to figure out anything about how to improve it.
For me, I always want to learn, want to improve on what I’m doing if/when there’s someone around who’s far better at [activity X] than I am. Maybe that’s where I differ with a lot of people, I don’t know.
Posted: Wed 3 March, 2010 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, News, People, Thoughts |
Two stories in the same day… [UPDATED : OK, as Andy C points out in the comments, they weren’t on the same day, just one linked from the other, and I can’t read…]
Number One : Jon Venables, one of the two who killed James Bulger, is taken back to prison “for breaching the terms of his licence”. People are surprised, one quote being
“He could have been recalled on licence if he committed an offence, it could be that he returned to Merseyside, it could be he might have approached the family. There is no evidence so far that he did any of these things.”
Number Two : Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, tells how she found Robert Thompson, the other one who killed James Bulger, and stood within twenty feet of him, although she couldn’t confront him.
Mrs Fergus said it was now her aim to find Venables and track him down in the same way.
I wonder if there’s a connection? Particularly if the News of the World is in on the act/witchhunt…
