davblogIn which someone you've never heard of writes about things you have no interest inPub Quiz- April 27, 2008 For a number of years now we've taken part in a weekly quiz in a local pub. We do pretty well and occasionally win. The chap that runs this quiz runs a number of other quizzes and a few times he's held a Champions' League night where top teams from all of his pubs come together to compete. We do well enough to be invited to these nights.So we weren't too surprised to be invited to one a couple of months ago. The difference with this one was that it was being filmed by Channel 4. According...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/pub-quiz.html Apple Shopping- April 25, 2008 I'm not sure why, but I always come out of the Apple shop on Regents Street feeling slightly disgruntled. It's like I'm visiting some strange planet where I don't understand the customs and I know I'm never really going to fit in.<br ><br >The staff don't help. I know they're all really helpful, but at the same time they always seem so smug and self-satisfied. Like they think they have the coolest job in London and whilst they're happy to help, they'd really far rather not have to...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/apple-shopping.html Redirecting RSS- April 23, 2008 I've harped on about this before, but I firmly believe that when you publish a URL on the web then it should be permanent. Of course you might want to change the way that your site is set up at some point in the future, but when you do that you should do everything you can to ensure that visitors using the old URLs are seamlessly redirected to the new URL.And this is true of any kind of URL. It's not just web pages. The same is true of the URLs of your web feeds. Many people who read your web...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/redirecting-rss.html Credit Where Credit Is Due- April 15, 2008 I spend a lot of time here complaining about broken web sites, so it's nice to be able to praise something that worked better than expected. And I'm slightly surprised to be able to report an impressive experience with a UK government web site.One thing that I found whilst sorting through my study over the the weekend was my driving licence. It's a provisional licence. I've never passed a driving test. I got a provisional licence when I was seventeen and over the next year I took many lessons...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/credit-where-credit-is-due.html Spring Cleaning- April 14, 2008 I spent a lot of the weekend clearing piles of old crap out of my study. I can't remember the last time I gave it a good clean, but it was nice to be reminded of the colour of the carpet and to be reassured that there is still a wooden desk underneath the layers of paperwork.One decision that I took was that I was going to throw away all of the old 3.5" disks that I found. It's been years since I used a floppy disk and I can't see me needing them in the foreseeable future. The last time I...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/spring-cleaning.html Google Calendar Spam- April 7, 2008 Is anyone else getting Google Calendar spam About half a dozen times in the last month I've got an SMS message telling me that I've received an invitation to an event on my Google Calendar and when I check the calendar it's actually some kind of 419 spam.I suppose that it was inevitable that the spammers would eventually find this new way of annoying people, but I'm not happy that it's apparently so easy for them. Is this going to go the way of email and blog comments, with people becoming...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/google-calendar-spam.html Books I Read in March 2008- April 2, 2008 Another month, another list of books read. I know how much you all love reading these lists.number9dream - David MitchellI started this at the end of February. And, surprisingly, found it all a bit of a struggle. I say "surprisingly" because I've loved the previous two David Mitchell books that I've read - Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. This (earlier) novel just didn't seem to work as well for me. I didn't find the story engaging and the characters all seemed a bit one-dimensional.Managing...http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/04/books-i-read-in-march-2008.html |