You are currently browsing the The English Guy's Personal Blog weblog archives for November, 2010.

Posted at 8:55 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in life

2 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    Yeah it had melted a little since last night so the journey in wasn't too bad. But it snowed for ...
  • mel
    Oh man! Black ice is sooooooooooooooooooo dangerous. Be careful out there!!!
 

Nov 29
2010

Posted by richard

It snowed over the weekend, and last night, so this morning we had about two inches to get through to work. Yeah I know, doesn’t sound much but when you don’t see snow for years, it certainly is!

Biking to work wasn’t that bad actually, not that much ice except frozen slush underneath the snow.

But today it snowed. And snowed. So we had another inch or two to bike through, although we left work early because of the traffic issues. Lincs FM said Louth was a ‘black spot’ because of all the ice, and it was, you could see the black ice forming very thick.

The weather report doesn’t look too encouraging, more snow overnight and tomorrow, so it looks like it’s going to be an early white christmas. I’ll try to take some pics if I can, and post the ones I have too.

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Posted at 4:27 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in entertainment

6 comments - Latest by:
 

Nov 18
2010

Posted by richard

Unbelievable! One of the best sites on the ‘net right now, is fubar!

I went to the BBC iPlayer site, looking for some good programs, searched for one, got a 500 error, then a 404 error, then clicked on a link in a list of available programs and got the same thing!

Went to the homepage, and the list of TV programs is now absolutely gone with this error:

The TV Channels schedule list is temporarily unavailable due to a technical problem.

Fabulous! Now I suppose I’ll have to do some work.

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Posted at 7:54 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in leisure

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Nov 17
2010

Posted by richard

This afternoon Hootsuite has been up and down. I tried to tweet earlier but it crashed on me. I couldn’t get to Tweetdeck at the time either.

Then just now, after trying to tweet again, it crashed again!

What’s up Hootsuite?

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Posted at 8:53 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in life

4 comments - Latest by:
  • mel
    Christmas used to stress me out so bad, wondering the same thing, what to get everyone, and how to afford ...
  • macbros
    The same thing you're getting me. :P
 

Nov 10
2010

Posted by richard

Here we are again, November already, Christmas is coming up and I have no idea what to get for presents for the family! Silly really, because I think the nieces and nephews would be happy with anything, they’re kids, they love playing with toys and so on. The parents, brothers and sisters are more of a challenge.

The parents are a real bugger because at this age, with their own business, they can pretty much buy what they want anyway. So really it becomes a matter of finding something that’ll surprise them.

I can’t believe the year has gone around so damned quickly, it really has flown by this year.

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Posted at 6:06 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in health

3 comments - Latest by:
  • mel
    You must be getting older, because apparently you've lived long enough to realize they're all full of shit.
  • lastactionseo | lastactionseo - der letzte SEO
    [...] ist aber, das seoFred ein Fan der Seite: http://www.richarddows.co.uk/2010/11/05/living-could-increase-risk-of-stroke/ [...]
 

Nov 5
2010

Posted by richard

Is anyone else utterly confused and disgusted by all these bulletins and news facts we get about what scientists have now discovered? If you drink too much you’ll get this cancer, but then we hear a drink a day is fine, then someone else says one drink a week is about right.

I remember hearing about smoking many moons ago, that although smoking is bad, yes, a cigarette a day wouldn’t hurt you and probably help clean the lungs out.

Now even Vitamin E is linked to ‘certain types of stroke‘. I really think that these researchers are just coming up with tenuous links to get the research cash. Perhaps now all Vitamins will disappear from shop shelves?

I mean seriously, water could be linked to cancer if you really wanted to look for it; and by this I mean when I was at University, in our first year we were given a lab book with dangerous chemicals and what they did, and pure water was listed as a carcinogen…

I would say that it might be a good idea to have a national website or database that lists dangerous foods/materials, but that would be ridiculous given that the government thinks alcohol is better than marijuana (see here, clearly not).

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Posted at 9:43 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in work

1 comment - Latest by:
 

Nov 3
2010

Posted by richard

So looking through search engine terms for the main GRS work site today I came across this anomaly. It makes me question the search engines’ criteria. Actually most of my questions were for Bing, but this one is for Yahoo.

Search for ‘polished acrylic signs’ and no.1 is this site’s page, no.2 is this GRS page. What makes me a little peeved?

  • No.1′s site doesn’t have the search term in the url;
  • No.1′s site only shows one image;
  • No.1′s page does not link directly to other related sign pages;
  • No.1′s site is table-based layout!;
  • No.1′s page only mentions the search term once;
  • No.1′s page doesn’t even mention the search term in the keywords or description;
  • No.1′s page isn’t updatable in terms of allowing customers to comment;

So why is No.1′s page No.1?

How very annoying, especially for website developers who try hard to get their sites to the top, using white hat techniques, only to find that standard and well-tested techniques (that the search engines themselves espouse!) don’t work or are ignored by them!

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Posted at 9:13 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in humour

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Nov 3
2010

Posted by richard

We got this message from Google after trying a search:

We’re sorry…

… but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.
See Google Help for more information.

Oops!

Posted at 9:07 am • Trackback Trackback

Posted in work

2 comments - Latest by:
  • richard
    Yeah it's a very nice software package, perfect for us. It's not too hard to get used to and learn, ...
  • mel
    Bummer. I haven't yet learned to use Illustrator. But it is on my computer, just waiting on me...
 

Nov 1
2010

Posted by richard

Today was a day I needed something in Illustrator, and it was just not there.

In FlexiSign, which we used to use at GRS, you could program it to create a print that would increment numbers. So, twenty signs with a bit of text somewhere saying ’1′, and the next would have ’2′, ad nauseum.

I had a bit of work today to create text from 15000 to 20000, not something you can just program in easily. Nor I might add, in a day! I figured a few minutes searching for whether Illustrator can do it or not might save hours later on. Disappointment follows, Illustrator can’t do that! No time saved.

:(