MaFt’s Musings

I’ve just successfully imported my old blog into this one. With any luck, Facebook Notes won’t suddenly add links on my profile page to the 346 ‘new’ blog posts… Apologies if it does!!!

I got an email today from the wonderful CCL Computers (that sounds more sarcastic than it actually is – they are a great company!) as a hard drive I bought from them failed during it’s warranty period. The drive turned out to be discontinued and so I was asked to find a suitable replacement around a similar price, which I did, and replied to their email.

This morning I had this in my inbox:

Hello MaFt

Thank you for your reply.

Your order xxxxxxxxx has now been amended for the HDD0133. All been well will be despatched this evening for delivery on Monday/Tuesday of next week.  Could you please ensure that they will be someone their too accept and sign for the goods.

If you require any further help or assistance please do not hesitate too contact us back by return of mail.

Kind Regards
::name removed::
CCL Returns Department.

There are, technically, no spelling mistakes in there; so well done in that sense! However, I count 5 grammatical errors where the wrong word has been used. For someone speaking on behalf of a big company you’d think they would at least try and give a good impression!

I honestly wouldn’t normally nit-pick to this degree but 5 errors in such a short email did make me laugh!

For those who read my blog as ‘Notes’ on Facebook then this is just a quick ‘note’ to let you know that you are actually reading my blog! The blog, MaFt’s Musings, can be seen in all it’s glory via http://maft.co.uk/musings.

Enjoy!

For those who don’t know I manage the Speed Camera Database for PocketGPSWorld.com (among other things). There’s only me who does this so any time away from processing submissions results in having to do the work anyway so my one week holiday in the Costa del Sol now means I have one week’s worth of camera submissions to process as well as those submitted since my return. In other words, my holiday has now resulted in me having to work twice as hard this week. I call it my pseudo-holiday!

On top of the extra stuff to process for PocketGPSWorld I also seem to have had a tonne of stuff to do for my own websites (new links to add, videos to upload, domain names to park and nameservers to edit) – this in itself is a good thing, it’s just a bad time so soon after my pseudo-holiday…

I don’t use Facebook that much other than for free webspace for uploading photos, the occasional game and the occasional message to someone I’ve not seen for years. However, when the kids woke me at 9 this morning I still felt compelled to grab me a ‘Vanity URL’ – I also got Mrs-MaFt one too.

It’s one thing that has really bugged me on Facebook, the difficulty in finding someone, even someone you know! Numerous time I chatted to people via MSN Messenger or on the phone saying if they were on Facebook they could see the photo’s I just uploaded – it usually turns out they are and the conversation then resorts to discussing which keywords to use to try and find each other as more often than not there are 16,000 people with the same name and it’s hard to recognise someone on a tiny profile picture, that is assuming it’s even a picture of them!

So now, Facebook have finally caught up with the times and allow facebook.com/your.name style URL’s – only 3 years too late…! Maybe soon they will get rid of all the crap and it will just be Twitter with photo albums!

My Uncle Bli has just ‘released’ his latest video / animation – check it out via this wondrous t’interwebnet link: HighlyOverated

It’s been a long, long time since I blogged for proper and getting hooked on Twitter has spurred me on to get blogging again – 140 characters just isn’t enough…

Previously I’ve used Blogger.com for my blogging needs but publishing it on my own server – this really annoyed me as there were not only more chances for things to go wrong while Blogger was FTP-ing the files to my site but also Blogger had this wonderful policy that if you used your own hosting you couldn’t use any of the (then) new fancy features that were added around 2004. I carried on using it simply because I’d got used to it… Shear laziness I know!

My last blog ran from February 2005 until February 2008  and spanned 4 jobs (Leeds Uni, Nektar Therapeutics, Dole Dosser, PocketGPSWorld.com/Self-Employed) – feel free to read it here: MaFt.co.uk/blog. It’s been almost 18 months since I last officially blogged. Now I’ve opted to use the mighty WordPress which I’m more than happy with after fiddling for just over an hour. So, expect some changes over the next week or so while I experiment with new plugins, widgets and themes and also get my head around what categories, sub categories and tags to use!
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Listening to: Nirvana – Territorial Pissings
via FoxyTunes

Well, my two latest sites are now up and running:

First up is seventyseventimes (77x) – the new name for Punk Worship.

Secondly is the redesigned jalapenodrums.co.uk – this has already had some good comments on the Mike Dolbear forum which is nice!

MaFt

Virgin Broadband is currently down… Well, their official description is: “Customers across the Yorkshire region may currently be experiencing a loss of their broadband Internet services”. Basically, I can get to a few sites but not any of the ones I need to… like maft.co.uk for my emails (can get them on the phone though), pocketgpsworld.com (so can’t get any work done – ie no money), garminpoi.co.uk (so can’t update that site and get a small amount of advertising money).

So, generally, it sucks! So I thought I’d share my moaning with you here on the blog cos Virgin let me go to blogger.com!

See ya

MaFt

I’m currently teaching myself Javascript which is turning out to be considerably more complex than I’d first imagined! I’m using the O-Reilly book by David Flanagan and I’m currently up to page 105 of 591 (and then another 450 reference pages…!) which is pretty easy to follow. O-Reilly books seem to be very good, they managed to teach me PHP quickly enough too! Still, once it’s done it’ll be handy!

Right, back to reading

MaFt

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Now playing: The Sex Pistols – Did You No Wrong
via FoxyTunes