Posts for December 2003 (15 entries)

Foggy morning

31st December 2003, late morning | Comments (15)

Just down the road from our house:


Bandwidth theft and flame-bait

29th December 2003, early evening | Comments (28)

Well well, after a nice break for Christmas, I returned to my blog to find two rather annoying things: firstly some complete arse has taken to posting aggressive and rude comments here; and secondly, that a very busy site had linked directly to the three greetings cards I displayed in an earlier post, with no mention of me or my site (I left a comment, but they didn’t do anything about it).

How was I to deal with those two things with a tummy full of turkey?…

View this post in full (814 words).


Playdo people

29th December 2003, late morning | Comments (9)

Playdo faces

My nephew, Lucas, made some playdo people last night while his mum and dad and I were at the cinema watching Lord of The Rings.

I understand he had some help with ‘Grandma’ (and possibly with ‘Grandad’), but ‘Uncle Dunstan’ was all his own work.

He’s two and a half.


A Gypsy blessing

24th December 2003, mid-afternoon | Comments (19)

There was a knock at our front door today. Mum and I got there at the same time and when I opened it up an old tramp was standing in our porch waving a china mug at us.

Can you make me a cop o’ tea please? I got moi own mug you see…

Mum and I both said certainly at the same time. She took his mug, and I led him around back to the conservatory, where he got settled in.

We knocked him up a nice big sandwich, fed him tea, and found a pair of warm gloves for him to take on.

Mum sat out and talked to him for about 40 minutes, (we both remembered hearing that tramps found the lack of conversation very hard to deal with) while I looked after my nephew, Lucas.

It turned out that he was a Gypsy (the tramp, not my nephew) and that he’d been on the road all his life. He said he used to have a rucksack with a sleeping bag in it, but someone had stolen it. He liked our dog, Poppy, and said he was glad it wasn’t too cold today.

As he was leaving he thanked mum for helping him out and said he’d put a gypsy blessing on us and our house for being kind to him.

What a nice way to spend Christmas eve: being blessed by a Gypsy.


Calendars

22nd December 2003, late afternoon | Comments (46)

Here’s a quick questions for you all: has anyone ever used the calendar feature on this site (you can see it in the right hand column of the month, day, and post pages), either as a way to navigate, or just to see when I’ve posted?

The reason I’m interested is that I read a post on Widgetopia asking if calendars were useless on blogs, and it got me wondering why I’d put one in my design.

If it turns out no-one uses the damn thing, and seeing as it takes up quite a lot of vertical space in the side bar, I might as well kill it.


What once was flowers and puppy dogs

18th December 2003, early evening | Comments (11)

Funny how greetings cards have altered since I was a kid. It used to be that any card you bought had to have a strong flower or motor car or loveable-puppy motif; but now I can go to Woolworths and buy my Grandma a birthday card with some bloke’s hairy arse on it (and she’ll like it)…

View this post in full (69 words, 3 images).


Who and where

17th December 2003, late afternoon | Comments (7)

I don’t have time to write a fancy piece explaining the hows and the whys and the do-you-mind-if-I-don’ts, so I’ll just point out that I’ve added two new dynamic features to the blog: A list of all the people mentioned in this blog, and a list of all the domain names linked to in this blog.

You can access both from within the archive pages, using the ‘Meta searches’ menu options.

For some examples of the people thing at its best, see searches on my Mum, my Grandad, and The Big Man.

I’ll try and produce a full write up on this at a later date. In the meantime, any comments or suggestions would be gratefully received.


Be nice to sheep

16th December 2003, late at night | Comments (44)

Well, after an impassioned email from Kirstin, I’ve made a few changes to the panorama graphics here, I hope they please the animal-lovers amongst us…

View this post in full (230 words, 1 image).


Apples and pears

16th December 2003, lunch time | Comments (11)

I found out the other day that the old apple tree at the bottom of our garden produces two different kinds of apple. How? Well apparently it’s not one tree, but two stuck together…

View this post in full (427 words, 1 image).


King Blog

11th December 2003, mid-afternoon | Comments (22)

If you looked through my browser history you could be forgiven for thinking that little else exists on the Web except blogs: personal blogs, group blogs, photo blogs, audio blogs, poetry blogs, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.

Bearing in mind their prolific and influential nature, I find it interesting that blogs seem to be spared the criticism the rest of the Web comes in for — in the wider world we seem to highlight flaws and failures in sites, whilst in the blogging world we only highlight success and innovation…

View this post in full (237 words).


Eggs, fresh from the hen house

11th December 2003, early afternoon | Comments (17)

Cluck, cluck, flap… plop:


The ginger line continues

10th December 2003, lunch time | Comments (9)

Well done people.

  1. #katmeyer {
  2. cursor: only-during-birth;
  3. position: recumbent;
  4. size: 50%;
  5. }
  6.  
  7. #ericmeyer {
  8. orphans: none;
  9. widows: none;
  10. }
  11.  
  12. #katmeyer:first-child,
  13. #ericmeyer:first-child {
  14. background: url('http://www.meyerweb.com/pix/2003/eskimo-kiss.jpg');
  15. bottom: dry;
  16. clip: none;
  17. color: #FCC2F3;
  18. display: proudly;
  19. hair-color: inherit;
  20. marks: none;
  21. quotes: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!";
  22. }
  23. Download this code: 70a.txt

What to get for christmas?

8th December 2003, late at night | Comments (23)

So, Christmas draws near, and for the first time ever I’m bereft of ideas of what to ask for. I think I’d quite like a book by your man Tufte, and maybe some Amazon vouchers for things I spot during the coming year, but otherwise my ‘Dear Santa’ list is as empty as can be. Something must be done…

View this post in full (115 words, 1 image).


I will now count backwards from ten

5th December 2003, the wee hours | Comments (15)

Getting your message across to the browsing-public is a tough job for web site owners: reading on-screen is far from optimal; connection speeds are still slow here in the UK; and with the average user’s attention span being smaller than my pen is (it's a very small pen), a web site owner has to work hard to retain a visitor beyond those first few seconds…

View this post in full (376 words, 2 images).


God is in the typos

1st December 2003, early evening | Comments (14)

I am currently experiencing the less-than-delightful side of being a programmer on a deadline — no sleep and no food has turned me in to a shivering wreck, and for some reason I’ve developed hyper-sensitive hearing in to the bargain — even the air sounds loud. It’s very odd.

It was in this slightly harried mental state that I found myself reading a line of code I’d written earlier today:

  1. // if all is god then insert info into database
  2. Download this code: 66a.txt

if all is god…

What can that mean?

Is The Almighty contacting me through the power of PHP comments? Has my slight dyslexia become a channel for Jesus? Will crazy people from the American Mid-West flock to see my typos: He wrote run query — it’s a sign Jesus wants gay people chased out of Heaven!*

Is my shaking the onset of a religious experience? Are my mis-spelt words a literary form of speaking in tongues? Is my amazing hearing indicative of finding Jesus, or the first steps to becoming a Super Hero? Or do I simply need some sleep and a bite to eat?

Whatever the reason turns out to be, it better not get in the way of this deadline…

*That’s the crazy people talking btw, not me. As far as I’m concerned gay people can hang out in heaven as much as they like… just don’t paint it pink or anything, OK?