Robots are cool

Madness - our managed offices have just removed the toaster from the kitchen because it was deemed to be a fire hazard. Yes, just a normal toaster. The insanity has reached a new level. Euan said it nicely: “A toaster in a kitchen, I’ve never heard of such a thing!”.

As you might have guessed, I’ve just tried to toast something.

I walked into a pub toilet at the weekend to overhear some guy doing a pee saying this to another punter:

Do you get a lot of people from Papua New Guinea here?

[pretending to be from PNG]: We eat each other, but we're generally small.

I'm cool with that man - I'm not from Edinburgh, I'm not from Glasgow. I'm from Crieff; small town, big people.

Then he walked out.

If I don’t reply to any calls or messages for the next wee while, I’m not being super-rude. Thanks to a combination of bad luck and me just being an arse, I managed to drop my phone on the road and have a car run over it this morning on the way to work.

What a donkey.

UPDATE: fair play to Orange – they got me a new phone within twelve hours of me reporting it to them. My numbers are backed up to my Mum’s computer, so I should be able to get them this weekend. I’ve only just noticed you can store the numbers to the memory card, which is much more useful than the phone memory.

I don’t spend much of my life crossing the road or dropping my phone. For both to happen at the same time seems a bit unlucky!

Jonathan says

Man, it’s odd finding random pics of yourself on flickr.

I couldn’t agree more. Although it’s not a total belter like his one, I found it by just randomly clicking around.

Pedro showed me these entertaining, often disturbing cartoons.

Salad Fingers and Toast Boy are exceptionally trippy.

Cockroach mind controlling wasps.

I’m torn between being amazed and a bit minged-out by this one.

I found a couple of old albums the other day so I scanned and added a bunch of photos from when I was growing up. I reckon they’re pretty cool.

Woohoo! According to the Evening News, Studio 24 won’t be closing after all – they have been granted an extended license despite a campaign from local residents. Looks like Edinburgh techno might not be totally screwed after all :)

I can’t link to it since I’m not subscribed, but I’d imagine there will be some information on this site soon enough.

I went for an eye test the other day because I noticed things like signs were a bit blurry after work. I had assumed that, just like my last eye test three years ago, they’d tell me I was A-OK and that the blurryness was from using a computer all day and my eyes taking a little while to re-focus. Which is why I was gobsmacked when they told me I am short-sighted.

It’s not uncommon for folk in their twenties to need glasses, especially ones who work with computers. It happens all the time – I know that. I just can’t believe that I’m one of them. Arthritis, yes. Back problems, expected. But not my eyes. In fact, all my life I couldn’t picture anyone needing glasses less than me. Which is why my first thought was that the test must be wrong and that I would get another. However, basic “can you read that?” tests with Jason and Karl showed that I’m really not as good at seeing stuff as them.

Fuck. Looks like I’m going to join the speccy twot brigade. Right, time to learn about vision.

...you are a pair of twots.

I was going to call this post “Another reason not to fart in public”, but I realised that saving them up for this is the only good reason not to.

Today I discovered that you can make some excellent noises if you fart when skooshing your arse with the shower head.

I hadn’t partied much this year until a few weeks ago and had forgotten how good it tastes. The last three weekends have seen three brilliant parties and a couple of really good clubs. These days though, going clubbing just seems like a warm up for going to a party, which are much more fun when you’re with the right crowd. I’ve met some exceptionally cool people and had a silly amount of fun winding people up, climbing along couches with Sarah while laughing uncontrollably and generally arsing about in fine style.

At one stage this weekend my mate Paul said,

“Mark, I think that you are Jesus Christ”

Any party where someone tells you you’re the son of God then later suggests that you get cloned for deployment in warzones and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize has just got to be good, right?

JMC died ten years ago. I remember when it I first read about it. This isn’t really a post about him – it’s more about me wondering how ten years have gone past since then. I mean… wow, ten years!

For those who don’t know, Jason McRoy was a leading UK downhill racer at the time and general handy lad on a bike. Most notably, for me at least, he was in the Dirt video (came out about the time he died if I remember correctly) which is probably the most inspirational video I’ve seen. Sure, being fifteen and highly impressionable definitely helped, but this thing was special. It just summed up pretty much everything biking was about at the time for me. Obviously they were stacks better than us, but they weren’t really doing anything we weren’t doing every night after school. There wasn’t any triple backflip 360 superman crap, just a bunch of guys going out and messing about on their bikes on some pretty ordinary looking trails. Stonking stuff. Ten years since that video. Crazy.

But, of course, it’s not that crazy really – more stuff has happened since then than I could ever remember, nevermind write down. Life has been full to the brim and then some. I’ve changed, my friends and family have changed, in fact everything seems to have changed so much. But I think back over the last ten years and have very few regrets. My life has been brilliant so far. Not always good, but brilliant nontheless. And that’s important. Maybe I’ll read this post in ten years and think the same thing. I hope so.

Note to self in 2015: presumably life still consists of running about doing cool stuff. If so, there’s a chance you’ve been too busy to do all those cool things you dreamt about. You’re running out of time. Quit work and spend all your money if you have to, but get them done.

I’ve been working on a PHP template engine over the last couple of weeks. As with a lot of things, there are mixed views about templating. I used to advocate not touching them – they’re slower, sometimes restrictive and sometimes make you learn a new language. I just couldn’t see the point. But after working with a few different designers/HTML coders, the clouds started to clear – although some were completely fine with with PHP, some got confused and some even got scared of doing very much at all – I decided that a template engine was the way to go, especially as if you the right one you get free presentation and business logic separation (a Good Thing – use Google if you want an explanation).

Ian Leitch’s post on templating popped up on Gentoo Planet today and he seems as confused as a lot of people are. He points out that templating systems usually go one of two ways – allow a limited set of commands or allow loads of commands. I agree that if you want to enable a lot of commands, you should probably scrap the whole templating thing and give full access to PHP or whatever, although this has a whole new set of considerations. Some people say that if your designer can’t learn PHP you should find a different designer. Unfortunately, in my world, this isn’t always an option. I have to work with a variety of designers/HTML coders and often have no control over who they are. Occasionally, if God is feeling particularly unkind, I have the unparalelled joy of working with HTML dreamweaver table based designers or other such scum. What would you rather these clowns had their hands on – PHP/Ruby/whatever or a limited set of operations of your choosing? In the end, what you use probably depends on circumstance as much as anything else. If you are lucky enough to only work with designers who are comfortable and proficient with your scripting language of choice, then templating gives you far fewer gains than if you have to work with people who you’d rather not give access to the filesystem to. But I still think there are gains to be had.

I looked into some template engines – there are hundreds of them – but couldn’t find one that seemed right (I guess that’s why there are hundreds of them), so decided to write my own. I might write more about my own template engine in another post, but to whet the appetite (or not, as is probably the case) I based my engine on the following:

• Not all designers are stupid and crap with code. But some are.
• The template code should be easy to read and write.
• You should be able to load a template file in a browser (without a web server) and view the placeholders.
• Should be easily maintainable and extensible.

While developing my system, an added bonus has been that I’ve found it way nicer to code templates now than using foreach, echo, etc. This wasn’t really part of the main plan, but it’s lovely that it’s worked out like that. Maybe I’ll write more about it later.

I get the impression that he likes the idea of separating presentation from business logic but that he doesn’t want to restrict what developers can do.

I read a girly magazine that my flatmate left on the table while I was eating my breakfast today. Check out some of this crap (direct quotes), from an article titled His date moves decoded>

“His hands cover his crotch = he’s indecisive and wants looking after.

He looks away to the left while talking to you = he’s thinking of his past – could be one of his exes!

He looks away to the right while talking to you = he’s imagining something. If he’s facing you, he could be fantasising about you.”

“He is lying back in his chair = he’s letting you know how great he’d look in bed.”

“If the tongue pokes out of his mouth, he’s signalling disapproval, or even disgust. You’re probably not the date he was looking for, but don’t take it too personally – this man is just telling you you’re not his ideal.”

“A raised eyebrow is a signal of active interest. The initial signs would appear to be very positive.”

Well, if hell ever gets cold enough and I actually manage to get a date with someone who reads this, I’m going to be completely and unfairly fucked (not in the good sense). I do all of this stuff all the time – I must have an active interest in every single person I meet, fantasise about everyone on the planet, be disgusted at everything, think I’m great in bed and be very indecisive all the time.

What a load of guff. A complete bag of nonsense. I’m just restless enough to move around all the time – I certainly don’t signal all my mates that I’m great in bed, that I’m interested in them and that I want looking after (yeuch!). I’m telling you, it’ll be just my luck… :roll: