I forgot to pay my Barclaycard bill this month. The amount I forgot to pay was massive. Absolutely huge. Yes, the balance from my statement last month was a staggering £21.28. Okay, that small amount of sarcasm aside (almost as small as the amount in question), at the end of the day the payment was due and I forgot to make it. It was my mistake, so let’s just get on to the point of this:
Read MoreMonth: November 2009
The curious coincidence of ‘Carriers’ and ‘The Crazies’
Okay, it’s not that interesting – in fact pretty boring – but when it happened, the absolutely amazing alliteration advanced itself into my mind and I just wanted to use it. Basically, the complete non-story is that when I gave my nephew a lift somewhere yesterday, he commented that he’d been to the cinema the night before and seen a trailer for a film that was about some kind of virus, but it made him think of zombies due to the what happens to the infected, the way they behaved.…
Read MoreI appear to have shamed my local paper into censoring me
It was only a really, really trivial thing – but that’s what it looks like: My local paper have removed a comment I made on their website, and I can only imagine that it was removed because I shamed them. The news report I commented on is this story about the son of a recent lottery winner. When I read it I noticed the comment that the chap in question wasn’t happy that his “personal life had come out” – the fifth paragraph in the article, which reveals where he…
Read MoreSome thoughts on munged email addresses
Note: This post is actually an article I’ve had on a couple of websites for a number of years, originally written shortly after softrock.co.uk became the victim of a very deliberate use of email addresses at that domain in the headers of UCE (aka a “Joe Job”). Now that this blog is up and running, it’s the ideal place for such material – so one quick re-read, check and update later, here it is. Introduction Right at the start I should state that I am very strongly opposed to the…
Read MoreSpoiler space on usenet and mailing lists
Firstly, what actually is a spoiler? It’s where a plot detail in a film, book, TV show or whatever, is revealed to people before they are able to see the film/show, read the book, etc for themselves. Sometimes a spoiler can be fairly mild, revealing nothing more than the name of a new character, but they can also be very severe, revealing a significant plot point, and spoiling the viewer’s enjoyment if they know what’s coming (hence “spoiler”). So, then, what’s spoiler space? Well, a long standing convention on Usenet…
Read MoreHow to prolong a customer survey
Yesterday morning I received a telephone call from a company acting on behalf of my bank, asking if I would take part in a customer survey – i.e., would I be willing to answer a few questions over the ‘phone? Normally, I’d say “no” to such things, but for various reasons which I won’t go into here, I chose to say “yes” on this occasion. So the girl at the company undertaking the survey, who was a very polite, friendly young lady, started asking questions – but there was a…
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