Becoming Irrational . . .

July 31, 2008 · Posted in Rants . . . · Comment 

Everyone has mental baggage that jumps up and smacks you without warning don’t they? Be they irrational fears, likes loves or hates. While my move to a job in central London and the accompanying daily hour and a half commute has been going well overall, I have found that it has highlighted some of my seemingly irrational hatreds (either that or I’m just getting old).

Odd that I mention the commute because I’ve just been reminded of this while out buying my lunch . . . what is it with shops insisting on giving out plastic bags for everything? I’ve brought a sandwich and a drink. Do I really need a plastic bag? If you look outside our office near Tower Bridge at lunchtime you will see apparently thousands of people carrying small green plastic bags from Marks & Spencer. I thought they were supposed to be leading the environmental campaign by charging people for bags? No sign of it here. And how much would it take to make you think twice about taking a bag? 5p? 10p? £1?!? All you’re going to do with it is carry your one sandwich about 200 yards back to your office and then throw the things away, ultimately into a landfill . . . aaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Should I really get started on the string of smokers camped outside London Bridge Tube station every morning combining with the queue from the London Dungeon and at least 4 newspaper sellers/give-awayers plus fancy-dressed idiots from the London Bridge Experience (wtf!) giving out flyers, all of whom are stopping me from getting home, and in the case of the smokers, all camped about half an inch away from the no smoking area, ganging up to choke me as well!

Yea, probably not today eh.

Cameron’s bike stolen as he shopsBBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition

July 24, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Integration, integration, integration . . .

July 23, 2008 · Posted in Site info . . . · Comment 

The glorious Intersheep is a wonderful place. Full of news, games, tools and, increasingly, people (some of who are also tools obviously!).

The problem, certainly for me, is becoming one of keeping all of these different systems who’s functions overlap to a degree, up to date,

For example I use Facebook (mainly for playing Scrabble and seeing what other people are up to by reading their status messages) and I use Twitter. Now isn’t Twitter basically Facebook with everything bar the status messages taken away? Great, so why update both?

What I want is a way that I can update one place and have everywhere that requires a status message from me updated at the same time. Twitter did have this until they switched the feature off due their much publisised capacity and scaling problems but there are other examples.

I use Google Reader as an RSS newsreader (occasionally checking out bloglines and sometimes switching back for a while) and most sites now have a blogroll, or a list of your favourite sites.  Now my blogroll would pretty much be the list of sites I read using Google Reader but I don’t want to have to go back and update my site’s list of links if I add or remove a site from my list of feeds.  Google has made a step towards this type of integration by allowing you to export you list of feeds as an OPML file and import it.  However this still means I’ll need to reser the list on my WordPress site anytime I change sites in Google reader.

If I find a story in Google Reader I can share it, and after some recent changes I can share a story and add a note to it . . . hmmmmm, sounds like I should be able to automatically add that as a story on my WordPress site doesn’t it??

The list goes on . . . I want to be able to upload pics from my iPhone to my Flickr account, add notes etc to it and have it appear on my site without having to have to build another new story.  I want my status/trophy list from my PSN account to be available on my site automatically and while I’m here I’d like the moon on a stick please 😉

These things are coming but they’re not there quite yet . . . quite how close things are I hope to find out over the next  few days/weeks as I play with this new site and, if things go well, start blogging from all over the place.

Skywriting? Not quite . . .

July 23, 2008 · Posted in Site info . . . · Comment 

OK, so not so much sky writing as train writing . . . it’s a form of transport isn’t it?

So one of the reasons to move to WordPress, as I mentioned in the first post was the ability or write on the move. Not necessarily crafting whole posts, everyone knows that the iPhone keyboard isn’t really up to that, but at least to be able to get down ideas.

This is going to be particularly useful during the two 55 minute train journeys I have to and from work 4 days a week.

Lunch, hmmmmm

July 23, 2008 · Posted in Site info . . . · Comment 

Ah, the big lunch decision . . . what to have today? Crap or health food?? Does it matter???

Not really, this is clearly just me testing the WordPress iPhone app 😉

Hello WordPress, hello iPhone blogging

July 23, 2008 · Posted in Uncategorized · 2 Comments 

So this is WordPress huh . . . looks simple enough I guess.

this will be the new, temporary home of Smufflersworld. I’ll be here for as long as it takes my current web host to upgrade to PHP 4.1 or until I discover that I can’t do everything I want/need to do using WordPress.

My site used to be based over at www.smufflersworld.com (and will be again) and was based on the Joomla content management system. It’s good, flexable and pretty expandable but I’m increasingly finding that it can’t quite do what I want to do in the way that I want to do it. After a couple of recommendations I’ve decided to give WordPress a go and see how it flys.

One of the things that has pushed me over to WordPress was their new iPhone app meaning that I can actually do something on the train offline (connectivity on the London to Cambridge line is appalling) and not lose it.

If you know me you know that they’ll be plenty more babble on here later, including some info about what I need this site to be able to do and hopefully I can get some help/advice on how to do it

Anyhoo I’ve got work to do . . .

ttfn

Sticky situation averted as man tries to glue himself to the PMBBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition

July 22, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Segway FailFAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments

July 17, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

SenseSurface sticks knobs onto screens, turns virtual controls physicalEngadget

July 16, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

"Washing machines live longer with cows on"B3ta Best of the Board

July 16, 2008 · Posted in foundFings . . . · Comment 

Next Page »