Andy Ramblings

Not being a fan of Tagging and have normally ignored many, but as it's Christmas The New Year and as it was Davide Simonetti's  Birthday, I thought well  Ok, this once, I'll do it. They will be brief as I'm not at home, am in Brussels and may have a few beers as I type....

"What are the seven best things you did this past year?"

Well, 7 of the best things? Not too hard then.. Here goes.

1: Finally getting of the steroids that I've been on for the past 29 years,  They were beginning to cause, well, not beginning, they had been for a few years, causing a lot of havoc with everything else but what they were been taken for. Good riddance to them!

2: Very recently, seeing England loose the Ashes so spectacularly that it but a full stop on all this cricket stuff  and that the English team of 2005 didn't actually win because they played well, but that they had had a pact with the weather.

3: Seeing Bush loose power in such a democratic way! Now too see him go back to his old job of Village idiot, hopefully he will bring along his pet dog with him.

4: Building up new commercial websites, and well, this is still ongoing, but hopefully to make something more with it.

[After a pause of a few days Internet techie problem, parties and evenings out]

5:Seeing Bush get a serious bashing in the US Mid-terms, Not that I think that much is going to change, at least it' gotten rid of that smog look of his face, oh and a certain Rummy has gone. Hoping to see him ride into the sunset with his poodle and a huge boot out the backside.

6: Seeing Blair the Magnificent start his slow, ( wish it was faster) decline, and seeing him dig his political grave live on TV. I don't think many people believe a word he says any more. Just wish the guy would not keep trying to save himself, but his party.

7: Well, it has been a long year, many events have happened, many people have gone, so good riddance, some, well you would have liked them to have stayed a little longer, but you know in yourself, that time moves on, and we are all left with the good memories of those. For me, as this is about me, I'm glad to have to have made it to the end of this year in one piece. Ok, I have plenty of spare parts, but that's different.

So now to tag a few other people to see what they have to say about their 2006 seven best moments, So, in no particular order.
Keith, Zoe at MBIAT,Karelian Blonde, Guyana Gyal, Anna at That's the way life is, and anyone who would like to share

So reader(s) as 2006 comes to a close, how was it for you? I hope that you like the new theme, it's still being worked on, but I'm sure you will agree with me, that it is a lot faster.
Happy New year, Bonne année, ? ????? ?????, Feliz Año Nuevo, Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar, Nuovo anno felice Lyckligt nytt år and for everyone have a great Hogmanay!! Drink lots and be safe.( I can't vouch for the correctness of the translations)

(To those waiting for the tag/meme it's harder to do that expected.. it's in the pipeline)

To all my readers ( the one or two who pass by)

I wish ye a merry Christmas, fill ye self with food and much Drink as ye can manage.

For ye shall raise a Glass to the Godfather of Soul, Who passed away this morning at 06:45gmt

As quite a few of you may know, the education system in the UK isn't the best in the world. You can basically get through all the way till your 16 and get your GCSC, and not have the ability to Read, Write or do your Arithmetic (yep that's the 3 R's!). This is becoming rather worrisome for the people responsible for educating the country. What do they do instead, they go and do some research on where the problem could show it's self up. Yep, they found that it can show it's self up in the karaoke bars!

So, if you're one of those souls who goes to the Karaoke bars and can't read the prompts, it could be that you can't read?!

The lyrics of the 10 most popular karaoke songs have been assessed and rated by government literacy experts.

Those tackling Robbie Williams' Angels needed the reading skills required to pass five good GCSEs (Level 2).

Experts from the Get On literacy campaign said 17.8 million adults would not be able to follow the song.

Ok, Angels (Lyrics here) is a hard song to get right, I don't mean in the lyrics area, but in getting it to sound right. Most folk who do tend to 'try' and sing it tend to have had a few pints to many? Or did these experts test the folks make sure they didn't have a drop to drink or a splif to smoke?
Some other notable songs that suffer the same fate are:

• Gloria Gaynor: I will survive
• Queen: Don't Stop Me Now
• The Commitments: Mustang Sally
• Grease: Summer nights
• Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds
• Abba: Dancing Queen (not only is that hard, but like Angels, hard to get right!)

So, as the report says, get yer readin' up ta scratch before ya embarrass yerself on the Karaoke!
I'm not saying that you would ever, ever find me on a Karaoke Stage, Drunk or Sober! This was just a comment on that BBC news report...

More info on English GSCS here.

Well, I've been rebuilding my PC yet again. It's a chore that I don't enjoy as I have hundreds of programs to re-install, some need configuring and well, some just don't get put back on. So it's a chance to do some early spring cleaning of a PC.
During this task, and over the years, I have found methods of making this chore a tad easier, being a computer 'geek' to some people, to me, I just like the things, and am constantly amazed at the speed of change. I used to be able to keep up, but I can't now, the turnaround cycle of upgrades and new technologies has gone from 18 months down to almost 3 months. I can't see any sane mortal keeping apace of that, unless they are Ubergeeks. Not me then

So, those tips?
Well, having a good backup is always a good idea, when I say backup, I don't just mean your e-mails, programs files and the likes, I mean total backup nothing less. My tool of choice for this is Acronis True Image. What True Image does, is take a snapshot of your harddrive, so that you have a full copy of all the contents of what you had safely stored away.
So, with that, I rebuild windows XP, the true image comes in use only to recover all the documents & settings files, these hold all the setting of all the files I have to re-install... (I'm going geeky aren't I?)
Anyway, as I said, it helps, but you still need to re-install all the apps, so that windows knows that they are there.
If you are using Open Source apps, Firefox and the likes, these don't need to be re-installed !!

Anyway, I'm still at it, installing, rebooting, installing rebooting.... Hopefully I should be finished soon......

After an appalling incident on an internal flight in the US, where a woman who had a serious problem with flatulence wanted to hid the problem by lighting matches. Now, I know farts can be a bit wiffy, but lighting a match isn't the best of ideas if you have a methane problem, using channel 5 or something like that may have been a wiser option.
Needles to say, all the passengers got a tad worried when they didn't smell the fart, but the smell of sulphur. The plane was forced to land all passengers were searched for explosives, obviously, non were found and the poor woman was a tad embarrassed.

She had "no malicious intent but had struck matches which is against [Transport Security Administration] rules," Ms Lowrance said.

The unidentified woman had an unspecified medical condition, Associated Press news agency said.

She was carrying safety matches, which the TSA allows in carry-on luggage.

The matches are not allowed to be struck, however.

So, the new security measure now, as this has been identified as a potential terrorist threat.
The scenario is as follows.

 A***: Hey A___ (name hidden for anonymity reasons) l, you must eat two of those gallon cans of beans, all of them?
A____: But But A** I don't like beans, they make me fart!
A***: That is the master plan! You eat the beans, get on a plane with a box of safety matches, when the plane is about to take off, you let rip, and light a match, If you don't go, by the powers of Allah, the infidels will die from that awful smell you make.
A___: Wow A** that is a cool plan, but they don't smell that bad?!

In respones to this risk, all passengers will be required to go via a Fartarium, to let rip safely before the plane leaves.

Stop press:
Fartarium in local airport blows up, some passenger went in with a lighted cigarette!

Source of inspiration here

Been beavering away with a new plugin. I found the greybox script from orangoo.com. It's a very simple script and can be used if the following situations:

•  It does not conflict with pop-up blockers
•  It's only 22 KB!
  
•  It's super easy to setup
•  It's super easy to use
•  You can easily alter the style as it is controlled through CSS

You can use it to pop to open a quick search window.

• Load Google in a 500x500 window
• Here you can have it in a fullscreen window

Obviously, more example at the Orangoo.com.

You can download the S9y script here.

Comments most welcome.

Tis Saturday, not much going on, well, it is 1am, so  can't say much as the day is still young.

So, the date has been announced and is England leading from the front? Of course not, we never do! We wait, like a master, to see if the food taster dies, before we'll start to eat a meal.
What brings this up? Well it's the smoking ban, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, in fact, I'm rejoicing! So way all the baa humbug and all that? Well it's because, England will be banning smoking last, and in my view, not the best time either.
Here's the banning list, in order of who's going to ban first in the UK.

• Irish Republic: March 2004 (ok not in the UK)
• Scotland: March 2006
• Northern Ireland: April 2007
• Wales: April 2007
•  England: July 2007

Read more about the time table here

OK, the Irish Republic (Eire) banned it and the pub industry didn't die! In the Summer I can imagine the pubs being empty inside and all the smokers falling over themselves outside in the pavement. If it's raining, well, they'll all be huddled in a corner under some ledge getting rain down their necks.

All I can say is this, I'll be glad, I just don't like going to pubs in general, you go in, you leave smelling like a big pile of poo. And yes you, if you smoke you smell like that too, especially when you have just come back from your fag break..

Yep, So 1st of July 2007 can't come quick enough!  But why can't England start at the same times as everyone else? Scared? Vote loser? (May Local elections?)