Andy Ramblings

Well apparently not. The good people at Waitrose (a supermarket here in the UK) asked a group of 5  expert chefs and guess what? Yep, they came back with 5 different ways to do the same thing. Not abnormal you might say, these chefs all have egos to massage so, they will do that.  So what's the solution? Trial and error? Should the egg be put in cold water then let the water boil and hopefully get a boiled egg eventually. Or should one boil the water first, then again, how do you know your water is boiled ?  ahh so many questions so much advice and who the hell is right.
Some famous chef, or Delia Smith made a who TV show just to show you how to boil an egg, Check it out here.
But if you can't follow that, then the very good folks at Lion Quality ( check their site here). These guys are smart, they have managed to take the guess work out of getting a boiled egg write, be it soft, be it hard, they have it sorted.  Pure genius, it's one of those ideas that you may think ,I could could have thought of that, kind of genius idea! How did they do it?  Well, It's all down to the ink that they will be using when they print their quality logo on the egg. (read about it here not a perfect URL)

 

 

Scientists are close to cracking the age old problem of cooking your boiled egg just right…step aside the clock and the running sand granules – here comes the self-timing egg.

Using the latest heat sensitive technology, Lion Quality egg producers tasked boffins to create a foolproof way to guarantee the yolk comes out the way you want it - soft, medium or hard boiled - every time. Carrying a special label, the egg goes into your pan as normal and when it is perfectly cooked the Lion logo appears as if by magic confirming your chosen preference.

“We are still perfecting the technology, but we are very excited at the prospect of sorting a problem that has wound people up at breakfast time for decades,“ said Gilly Beaumont of B&H Colour Change.

There you go, it will be nice and easy to get that egg right! Problem solved. Pure genius!

Yep, Microsoft is intending to force you to upgrade to IE7 upon you like it did with WGA (or Windows Genuine Advantage). I'm no real fan of IE, as I have been getting started in creating website. IE is the biggest pain, it basically just can't do anything right on the design front. I ended up spending more time fixing issues with IE than with Opera or Firefox.

Considering Microsoft haven't done any development on IE since it was released with Windows XP, that's 2001. It was the storming success of the likes of Firefox and Opera that got MS off it's lazy arse, and make a browser that is secure, safe etc. But I don't see MS being able to do that.

Would be wanting to know how to stop Microsoft from installing IE7 on your PC? IS there a way? Well, yes, there is always a way. You mainly have to look at the Microsoft Technet sites. This is where Microsoft 'helps' it's cooperate customers, who would have busy IT depts, who don't want to have IE 7 installed on their staffs PC automatically.  How's it done? suprisingly easy actually, if your aufait with tinkering with the registry, then all you need do is the following.
  Read More

Yes, it's been a while since  I mentioned anything that's happened in my small area of the interweb. I've been busy. Got a small contact to build a very big website. Will mention more when the site goes public. At the moment it's in it's advanced stages of development. Woot !

Today I was woken up by bleedin' builders, no real problem with that, it's when you see them walk past your window and your on the third floor, then you have every reason to freak out a bit! The whole block of flats is getting a nice new fresh lick of paint, bricks getting re-pointed etc. So it can only be good news. The other nice bit is that with all that scaffolding around the flat  I have some more shade from the sun. Pity they didn't start work last week, as the soaring temperatures we have been having over this week (Heat records were broken! over 38.5^o C).

Other news, Yep, Israel actions of in the mid-east, are understandable, but lets get a sense of proportions here, The notion that 'we do what we want, and at what ever the cost, yes that's fine when your spending someone else's money ie, US taxpayer. But I'm sorry, it also has an effect on the rest of us. The cost of oil, energy etc have all gone up. I'm not going into the adolescent argument of who started it first, as we will get nowhere. I would have thought that Israel being a 'mature' democracy I would have expect  less of an adolescent response. But there you go, two teenagers having a fight that effects us all and will more likely cause long term problems with the whole area.

As I sometimes say, Any fool can start a war, But it takes a very brave person to prevent one starting at all.

You know in the newspapers, they have those odd snippets of news that doesn't really fit anywhere, but are worth the effort to read for their comedy factor. Here's a sample for you from around the UK and Ireland.

1. Commenting on a complaint from a Mr. Arthur Purdey about a large gas bill, a spokesman for North West Gas said, "We agree it was rather high for the time of year. It's possible Mr. Purdey has been charged for the gas used up during the explosion that destroyed his house."
 (The Daily Telegraph)
2. Police reveal that a woman arrested for shoplifting had a whole salami in her underwear. When asked why, she said it was because she was missing her Italian boyfriend.
 (The Manchester Evening News)
3. Irish police are being handicapped in a search for a stolen van, because they cannot issue a description. It's a Special Branch vehicle and they don't want the public to know what it looks like.
 (The Guardian)
4. A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coast guard spokesman commented, "This sort of thing is all too common".
(The Times) Read More

Not much happening, well I lie, there is always something happening somewhere in the world, or somewhere closer. But, not much happening in my part of the world. So to entertain you till something does happen.
It's one of those kill kill anything that points a gun at you... Grrrrr...

As we all know, it has been over one year since London was hit by it's first suicide bombers, but not the first time  London has been bombed many times in the past 30yrs by the IRA,  Did we get any draconian laws that took away our civil liberties? No we didn't, what's the difference now?  A terrorist is a terrorist, be they Irish, be they English, be that black, be they blue, be they from anywhere, there is no difference between them, they all use the same method to try an put forward their view of the world, and they only know one way and we know what that is.

The London bomber say they had grievances,  that the West tends to have a very hypocritical policy towards the middle east, This I hear, this I understand but I don't support their way of expressing their grievances.

The prime minister told MPs it was down to moderate Muslims to stand up to extremism and tell those with "grievances" against the West they were wrong.

 Souce

This shows that someone is just NOT listening to what people have to say, someone who clearly doesn't understand why some people will go to extremes to express things.
I will pass you over to Rachel North a survivor of the London bombing who has so eloquently expressed what I think thousands of us have felt.  Read her comments on  A 'completely false' sense of grievance

This is the 2nd test, small change made to the img tag. changed class="serendipity_image_link to class="thickbox"

So, when you press on the image, the image should load on top of the page, with a gray overlay. If this doesn't happen, then all I can say is, it's not workin'. As the call for the script is very basic.

<a title="Clounds Over London" class="thickbox" href="/uploads/images/clouds_over_london.jpg"><img src=""/uploads/images/clouds_over_london.jpg"><img" width="110" vspace="5" hspace="5" height="83" border="0" style="border: 0px none ; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;" src="/uploads/images/clouds_over_london.serendipityThumb.jpg"  alt="Clouds over London" /></a>

Fingers crossed this will work!?

 

Over the past two days on trying to get a script called Lightbox JS and Thickbox JS to work with this blog software. What do these scripts do? Well it's very simple, if you want to have an image in your content, there are several ways in which this can be done.

• By having the image at an ok size to fit into you comment.
• By having a thumbnail that links to a bigger image that can load up in a new window, or a popup window
• You have a smart easy to use java script to load up the full sized image over the page, not in a new window.

It's the last way that both of these scripts work, I am hoping to find a way to get both of the scripts to work at the in the same site without disturbing each other, I am sure it can be done on a normal HTML based website as both use different ways to call up the script. SO I am using thickbox script which I find is better as it has a smaller file size.
Here's a nice picture of a cloud cover and colour.