This is where all the magic happens.
Categories
Categories
Dear Donkey – Foiled!
>Dear Donkey,
> Remember how the girl behind the counter in Specsavers flirted with me? Well, I was really looking forward to returning there, so that she could flirt with me a little more. What happens? Well, my girlfriend goes and picks up my contact lenses for me, that’s what!
> I need your help, and I need it fast. I need a good excuse why I can go back to Specsavers periodically.
> Anon
Donkey says:
Ahohohoh! NOW we’re getting into my favourite territory.
There are a couple of options here. One superb choice would be to sneak round to Specsavers, and if the girl in question is on duty, pop inside. Look at some frames, maybe try a couple on. For this exercise, it is best if you have your contact lenses in, otherwise the next step will be very difficult.
Wait for her to look over your way. When she does, shout OI!
at her, or something equally sophisticated. Tell her that you need help choosing some frames, and ask her which pair make you look the most drop-dead gorgeous and fuckable.
You probably don’t need me to tell you where to go from there. Such a phrase is like a sprinkling of paraffin on the flames of flirt. Bask, enjoy, and most of all, enjoy.
Another option is to mix up some salt solution and squirt it into your eye. This will make your eye go all red and gross and sore, which enables you to enter the opticians and bathe in the glow of her sympathy and love. The downside of this is that you’ll rapidly be rushed through to the consulting room, when I’m sure you want to spend more time stood at the counter with Flirtella herself, and you probably also don’t want to have salt in your eye preventing you from gazing adoringly down her top.
These are all fantastic ideas. We can tell, because I came up with them.
Categories
Valet
Further to a previous post where I asked you to name my new web app, I’ve decided that it’s ready for public release.
I’ll probably tweak the appearance of it at some time in the future, but it’s all up and running now at Valet.
Categories
Dear Donkey – Flirt
> Dear Donkey,
> The girl behind the counter in Specsavers flirted with me. She was quite cute, and wearing a low-cut top.
> This isn’t a question. I just wanted to gloat. Hah.
> Anon
Donkey says:
Were my mailbag a little less empty, I’d discard this missive in a trice. In case you’d forgotten, I am incredibly studly, and am approached by foxy young things with sultry come-to-bed eyes on a daily, nay, HOURLY basis. Maybe one of these days I’ll take you out and you can observe the master at work.
Given that you haven’t asked a question, I’m free to offer you whatever advice I choose, without being constrained by being forced to make it pertinent to your request. As a result, I offer you this nugget: get a haircut you idiot.
Anyone else out there who has got problems as big as this fool?
The stainless steel corkscrew pictured was my primary corkscrew between about 2001 and 2003 (inclusive). I liked it because it was beautiful, but it did a bad job, because it’s stupid.
The [Waiters Friend][], two of which are pictured, are a superior device because of the hinged appendage which allows you to lever the cork out, thanks to the miracle of Physics.
[waiters friend]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corkscrew_%28tool%29
*Beautiful But Stupid* does not have this feature. but that’s not its only flaw, for its beautiful screw is narrow, and much more prone to slippage than the loose coils of the other corkscrews pictured.
In summary, Beautiful. But incredibly stupid.
It’s no secret that I am expecting to become a father at some point during this forthcoming summer, and very pleased about it I am too. Now you know what I was alluding to in points 25 and 28 when I indulged in [a certain meme][] a while ago.
[a certain meme]: http://pete.nu/blog/2005/12/memes-beat-whinging-any-day/
Parenthood-related anecdotes will surely skyrocket when the happy day arrives, but for the meantime we have choice examples such as the one which I am about to relate. I warn you in advance, it doesn’t have a punchline or any sort of satisfying payoff, so if you require such things in your literature I expect you to walk away now.
Categories
Conformance checker
I’m working on a program that utilises the [W3C Validator][] to “watch” a webpage, and automatically send you an email if your page stops validating. Functionally it’s fully operational, and is currently undergoing alpha testing. However, I have no idea what to call it, and its working title stinks like rancid ass.
[w3c validator]: http://validator.w3.org/
Help. My current fallbacks are things like “watchr” and “validatr”, which are derivative and dumb and preferably avoided. Please donate your ideas by email (there’s a link in the sidebar) or put something in the comments box.
*UPDATE: It’s available [here][]*
[here]: http://www.pete.nu/valet/
Ade discovered an undesirable behaviour when writing a comment on this site, which I believe is probably also present in the WordPress classic theme.
The main text field for entering comments in was being created using the following HTML:
<p><textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4"></textarea></p>
As a result of a bug in Internet Explorer, as soon as you start typing in this text field it will expand to the width of the browser window, leaving the right-hand edge hidden underneath the sidebar. The culprit is cols="100%".
To fix it, I added a couple of lines, so the HTML now reads:
<div style="width:100%">
<p><textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4"></textarea></p>
</div>
This seems to fix the oddness in IE without affecting the rendering in Firefox. Let me know if you encounter any further peculiarities.
Foundation (to 9 months)
Shiny Tight Stuff is the name of the band that I formed with my friend Craig at the end of 1997. A few months earlier I had bought my first bass guitar, after years of listening to music and imagining that I was up there on stage. I realised that there was no reason why it shouldn’t be me, and so I took the plunge. It was only a matter of weeks later that Craig, motivated by my own bravery, decided to get a guitar and join the fray. It was on the 27th December 1997 that I was idly flicking through a video games magazine in Craig’s bedroom, and I remarked “I wish I had a girlfriend so that I could make her wear shiny tight things.” Craig responded “Shiny Tight Things would be a good name for a band.” Hold on, we thought – we’re a band… kinda. In fact, the only thing stopping us from being a band at this stage was the fact that we didn’t have a name. Literally within minutes, we realised that by giving ourselves a name, we could legitimately claim to be in a band, and impress the girlies. Initially Shiny Tight Things, we took a poll amongst our friends and agreed that Shiny Tight Stuff was marginally catchier.
Categories
Some Recent Listening
Here’s some stuff that I’ve been listening to lately.
**Brassbound** by *The Ordinary Boys*
I should let you know that I don’t change the CD in the car very often. As a general rule, I’m so eager to either (a) get to work or (b) get back home again, that it never quite seems to be the right time to go through the rigmarole of opening the glove box, getting a CD out, performing the changeover routine, blahblahblah. This particular album, however, was sufficient to set a new record – I could only listen to it one-and-a-half times before my brain said No more!
and I involuntarily but willingly ejected it from the system. I ejected the CD – not my brain.
This album is completely pointless. It’s unoriginal ska-pop that just treads a load of boards that made a rather nasty squeaking sound first time around. I had heard of this band before, but it wasn’t until after *Celebrity Big Brother* ended that I thought to myself, hey that Preston fella wasn’t completely repellent, I wonder what his band sounds like.
Well, short-lived that was.
**Trouble** by *Ray LaMontagne*
This, however, is superb. I do most of my listening to music whilst I’m pootling about on the computer, reading weblogs and writing PHP and fiddling about with CSS. Every once in a while, I find myself listening to an album that is so poignant and rich with sound that I hit the switch on the monitor, and allow myself to do nothing but listen for the next 45 minutes. This is one of those albums.
Fabulous voice, fabulous songwriting. This is everything that I thought [O][] by *Damien Rice* would be, until I discovered upon continued listening that it was shit.
[o]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AXKRB/
**The Back Room** by *Editors*
There are one of two possibilities here. Either I’ve only listened to this album twice, or I’ve listened to it a dozen times but it’s so unimpressive that I’ve not noticed. The singles seem to be reasonably catchy, but the overall effect is early Coldplay with larger testicles
– not enough to really twizzle my goatee. This might be one of those albums that needs to be played in the car. Tell you what, I’ll make a note, do that, and then get back to you.
**Supernature** by *Goldfrapp*
Ah, *Goldfrapp*. *Goldfrapp* have never, to my knowledge, disappointed. Alison just gets hotter and hotter, and the music – well, I suppose the music does too. I should make a date to go to a *Goldfrapp* gig, I really should.
There is a but
. The first song was used on a mobile phone commercial. If it was the second song, or the third song, then that would be fine, but I find myself wondering whether I’ve put on the *Goldfrapp* album, or if a commercial break just started. This is bad for me, and bad for *Goldfrapp*, but probably quite good for the mobile phone company in question.
**Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not** by *The Arctic Monkeys*
This is a tragic tale of *Libertines* proportions. *The Arctic Monkeys* are good, really good. This album is good, really good. But it just can’t cope under the weight of everything that’s going on in its name. Some people would call it hype, but it’s not. It’s more like a religion. This band have a lot of peoples’ hopes riding upon them, and I don’t think that they’re up to it. They are drowning in their own gimmick, and the Pandora’s Box-esque nature of things means that this fabulous new way of getting yourself heard will very quickly be hijacked and controlled by the players in The Industry
, and the only thing that will have changed will be the brand of clothes being worn by the guy who is making millions off of your effort.
If I sound cynical and pessimistic, then I apologise. This is the end result of years of analysis and pessing. I don’t pess lightly. My pesses have been thought about at length.
**Plans** by *Death Cab for Cutie*
I’m not au fait with the whole history of *Death Cab For Cutie*. In my cybertravels, I often stumble across mentions of them here, there and everywhere. Generally, these mentions seem to be about who they are, and why they are, and some television program called *The O C*, and there is precious little mention of the music. This album, for those who are interested, is a collection of mainly exceptionally good songs, with some slightly dull ones that don’t really ruin things too much. There is some very competent songwriting ability in evidence here.
I think that’s it for now.