Dad

Posted by Kieran - 19/01/08 at 11:01:26 am

A rare burst of artistic creativity:

I shaved my dads face the day before he died.
I had waited 23 years to earn his pride
and now that I’ve got it, i would trade it away,
to have him back for one more day.

To say “I’m sorry and lifes too short,
I regret every time we struggled and fought” -
but its enough to know deep in my heart,
that you loved me whatever - even apart.

SimpleLife Flickr Updates

Posted by Kieran - 17/01/08 at 06:01:29 pm

Check out my lifestream for exciting developments on the SimpleLife front.

Coming soon:

  • Show Flickr images in feed. (Optional)
  • Show only Flickr photos in specific tag. (Optional)
  • Flickr related links to a non photo page are not marked in flickr colours. For example a link to a flickr set from delicious, will now look like a link from delicious instead of an uploaded photo.

TV Chef In Chicken Fiasco

Posted by Kieran - 16/01/08 at 04:01:49 pm

Eeep - the TV lied again! Well - more specifically sanctimoniuos TV personality “Chef” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall lied. Well probably not directly, but he didn’t tell the whole truth. And his producers certainly didn’t let the truth get in the way of a good old fashioned tear jerking brow beater.

Basically - don’t buy chickens. Eat carrots, potatoes and peas but not chickens. Cows you say? Ok, because leading them to slaughter is fine. Chickens though? NO WAY! THEY EAT THEIR OWN SHIT! Pigs? Sure they roll in it but its not the same, and anyway, they have curly tails and snouts.

No - for some reason this posh chap who never appears to do much but try and drag us back into the iron age wants us to avoid the chicken. And if you can’t? The message is simple - go free range.

The whole point of his little charade was to show the difference between free range and intensively reared chickens. Not sure why he singled out chickens mind, because I’m pretty sure killing any animal for food isn’t going to be that fun for the animal, especially our four legged friends who get hung upside down and bled dry. Anyway, maybe its easier to buy a shed and rear chickens. Cows are inconsiderate and take too long to get big enough to eat.

Free range.

The hypothesis - set up two chicken runs, one intensively reared, one free range and show people the difference. Hopefully they’ll decide of their own free will to buy free range in future. Unless like 65% of us you earn under the national average, in which case your dinner will just taste of guilt from now on.

Problem is -

An industry watchdog said he allowed needless cruelty to exaggerate the “appalling” conditions at the farm he created for television David Clarke, chief executive of the industry watchdog Assured Food Standards, who investigated the farm, said: “When Hugh set up this experiment he told viewers it would run to industry standards. There was no way it was going to pass our inspection. We agreed to give Hugh a 20-minute debrief at the end of the inspection on camera, and we broke the news that they had failed. It was obvious some of what we said was not helpful to the message Hugh wanted to give his fans. I was pretty shocked when that wasn’t shown on the programme. Hugh didn’t pass the test and it didn’t fairly represent intensive farms.”

Oh dear - more accusations levelled at Channel 4! Seems like someone somewhere is a maverick who just can’t play by the rules! The only saving grace from the networks position is that their wasn’t a phone-in competition to win 6 eggs.

Q. How many times this year will a fat TV chef tell you / your kids / your pets what to eat?
A. Faaaaar toooo mannnnny.
B. Duck.
C. Blue.

At one point (just call me) “Hugh” broke down in tears at the plight of the birds, which were a) crammed into a barn, b) never saw daylight and c) suffered blisters on their legs from sitting in their own shit. He then said: “If consumers are better informed, they may be prepared to pay more for a free-range bird, in the same way they already do for eggs”. Unfortunately Hugh, all that suffering that made you cry like a bad actor was totally unessecary and unjust and better still all your fault.

But Mr Clarke said both his freerange and intensive farming failed to make the grade. In the intensive shed, problems included bad ventilation and pest control. The free-range run was criticised for being close to a derelict area which could attract vermin. The chickens were also at risk of bird flu. Mr Clarke added: “Only this week, 20 miles from that farm, there was an outbreak of avian flu. There was no record of who had access to that barn.”

Fearnley-Whittingstall also failed the inspection for not ensuring the chickens were killed humanely. Mr Clarke added: “We were not satisfied the stockman was culling the birds properly. Birds would have suffered. Farmers across the UK were made to feel ashamed of their methods but the industry is very highly regulated. We have stringent tests and Hugh didn’t pass them. It’s a shame viewers didn’t know that.”

Shocker. In fact, it gets me thinking - how many kids did Jamie “Jools” Oliver have sitting in their own poo in order to prove a point about school dinners - all those kids cooped up in a battery farm style classroom, faded energy saving bulbs dimly lighting the chalkboard? Who can you trust these days?

Plugin Standards

Posted by Kieran - 16/01/08 at 03:01:51 pm

Suggestions For Plugin Standards

Hmm… seems like I’ve got some work to do! I’m still struggling with uploading my plugins to wordpress.org - svn isn’t particularly user friendly for the unitiated, and my picturegrid plugin page currently looks like death. WHY?! EVERYTHINGS HOW IT SHOULD BE! Feel like banging my head against a wall, as there is literally nowhere to turn for help…

LDN Singer Hates TXT SPK

Posted by Kieran - 15/01/08 at 10:01:59 am

Turns out Lily Allen hates text speak.

She tells British magazine Marie Claire, “I get upset about how illiterate young people are becoming. The other day, someone texted me in that f—ing text speak without any vowels; I got so annoyed, I replied just in vowels.”

Not quite sure where the change of hearts come from though, given one of her biggest singles was “LDN” (6 in the UK charts).

Outspoken popstar in double standards shocker?!

Bank Charges - STOP WHINING

Posted by Kieran - 14/01/08 at 01:01:52 pm

Generally I’m as against the man as anyone. People trying to take money, or overcharging, because they can would usually really boil my blood… But just lately its the consumer heroes that are beggining to get under my skin, all those people who are banding together to lead a revolt against the evil profit hungry banking industry.

I mean, I’m sure they’ve probably considered the old adage that “nothing comes for free“. Not even bank accounts. Shocking I know, but banks aren’t charities, they are companies. They employ people, they look after and lend money for a profit, they help you get paid, they help you pay your bills, and they spend substantial cash on making things better:

High street banks have delayed the introduction of a new payments clearance system that would reduce the time it takes to move money between accounts from days to seconds. Apacs, which represents the banks, promised in December 2005 that the faster payments service would go live in November this year. But Apacs said yesterday that while the main infrastructure was working, the trials between banks and between each bank and the centre were more time consuming and more complicated than anticipated.

The faster payments service was originally due to cost the banks £50m to £65m including distributing millions of hand held “chip and pin at home” machines to ensure online account holders could authenticate transactions. Now it is expected to cost substantially more.

Emphasis on the cost there, which is a lot of money. Now does anybody, honestly, believe that this should all be done for free? I don’t expect Sky to supply me Sky+ for free. I don’t go to Tesco’s, fill a trolly and then waltz out whilst taking loads of carrier bags for putting smelly gym clothes in without giving anyone any money. Why should all this banking magic happen for free? Why should my bank give me the facility to give other people money (at any time of the day) by visiting a branch, using a phone or by using the internet?

bank charges

Notice i don’t include using a credit or debit card in a shop, because the retailer already pays that. Or more correctly i do, because the retailers only raise their prices to compensate. Difference is the raised prices then hit everyone, even those using cash. Surely thats not fair for those who were organised enough to withdraw £20 from the cashpoint?

And thats getting close to my point. I’ve paid £50 in 20 years of banking for not having sufficient funds to pay a direct debit. £25 for the bank, and £25 for the mortgage lender who had to try again. High, i agree, but then over twenty years that works out at £2.25 a year for having a bank account. Which is actually pretty cheap.

Compare that to these idiots who range from £600 to £6,000. £6,000??! IN BANK CHARGES? How stupid do you have to be? As far as I can see, you deserve it. If these muppets are so stupid they can’t sort out their finances, why should i have to pay? Doesn’t that strike you bleeding heart consumer superheroes as a touch unfair? Because thats what will happen, if the banks can’t fund their business through attacking the financially stupid with bank charges they’ll just charge us all. And i bet you they increase their revenue.

Its not inconceivable that they could start charging for every direct debit (i have 6 - gym, mobile, landline, gas & electricity, water & mortgage) every month, they’ll charge for the fact that i have an account, they’ll charge for the joint account i have, they’ll charge for the debit cards attached to both, they’ll charge for my pay from work being accepted.

All because some egit spends more than they actually have and then has a good old whinge because it wasn’t their fault their greedy fingers couldn’t put down that dress, those shoes, that pint and that steak. Thats not fair.

Bank Charges

Even if the banks somehow get away with it, and the OFT/Courts decide that the charges are legal - you won’t get a penny back. Because the banks will have been backed by law, they’ll be in the right, and for every complaint they’ll flip you the fingers. Hell they might even put up their charges to compensate for the legal costs.

So lets recap:
1. Banks lose - they start charging for banking which affects everybody
2. Banks win - bank charges continue, but no one can claim them bank anymore.

Win win then. :|

New Theme!

Posted by Kieran - 11/01/08 at 08:01:01 pm

So…. i got quite bored and decided that all this plugin development was beginning to take a detrimental effect on my blog. I mean, I’m not the most frequent of writers anyway, and just recently I’ve myself bottling things up and writing things down to remember to write about all over the place.

Anyway I saw a post about wordpress themes on another blog, which i found linked from another blog, which itself was linked from another blog that just happened to be using SimpleLife. See, plugins are useful sometimes! Well i looked through them, and i found GimpStyle. Thats what I’m after! Clean, simple (or so i thought…) and neat.

Obviously all themes need a little tweaking if you do anything remotely interesting, but i don’t think i was quite ready for the amount of tweaking i had to do!

  • Make theme widget ready. I love my widgets I do!
  • Spread out from one sidebar to two.
  • Sex up the sidebars - borders in lists? NO! - Scratch that i’ve redone the sidebars completely. Pagination looks good, each section/widget is nicely spread, borders are gone… yada yada.
  • Comments needed some love. I rewrote the comments.php
  • Pages in header needed an overhaul, try installing the theme as it is with more than 4 pages and then having subpages! Ooof.

And I think that might be it! Anyway, if anybody wants they can have copies of the edited files, and I will speak to the author about making the re-edited theme available here..

ICONIZE!

Posted by Kieran - 08/01/08 at 01:01:29 pm

So I’ve written another wordpress plugin. Well, when i say “written” i really mean compiled, because this one is based on the rather excellent Iconize project created by Alexander Kaiser.

IconizeWP is a simple wordpress plugin that attempts to intergrate Alexander Kaiser’s excellent Iconize project with any Wordpress blog. Simply activate the plugin and all links will have an icon designating the target’s content. Icons by famfamfam.

Some examples of the plugin in action (Note - you’ll only see these in a supported browser!):

Armed Forces “Not Particularly Safe Career” Shocker

Posted by Kieran - 07/01/08 at 06:01:15 pm

How stupid do you have to be to go round telling people the Army is dangerous? Excuse me? What, you mean being shot at might be harmful? Oh dear…

It seems like someone somewhere might have missed the point doesn’t it. Check this article out - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7174431.stm Oh no, you mean someone’s advertising something and only pointing out the positives? I mean, thinking about it, it would be pretty silly paying money to advertise the negatives. Imagine Coke advertising the fact that Coca Cola could make you fat and rot you teeth? Marks & Spencers advertising “this isn’t just chicken, this is battery farmed, carcinogenic chicken that tastes like hot death and is overpriced by 200%”.

The report’s author, David Gee, told the BBC that new recruits cannot predict how they will feel later on in their lives.

Funny that - neither do I. But I don’t use it as an excuse not to get a job, in case I change my mind about what I might like to do. Turns out, the 9-5 thing? Its great for now, but in ten years I might not like it anymore so I’m going to get out now, before I get too involved. 24/7 PS3 for me from now on.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is a Quaker organisation which is “committed to a culture of peace and the creation of a peaceful world”.

Quakerism holds pacifism as a cornerstone of its religious beliefs. Great - David Gee (from the aforementioned Trust) is not in anyway biased then?

The report does highlight one thing though - when you join the armed forces you don’t get to sit around laughing and jokin and abseiling all day. Occasionally you have to do your job - like shoot and be shot at. Great, glad to have that cleared up then.

Its not like the media, with the endless photos of dead soldiers and burning children aren’t helping redress the balance anyway.

SimpleLife 1.1b

Posted by Kieran - 06/01/08 at 04:01:41 pm

You wait all week for an update and two come along in minutes. Thanks to Kev who pointed out a nasty typo bug which caused 1.1a to run a PHP5 function in 4.x

No need to upgrade from 1.1a to 1.1b if you already have 1.1a and it wrs (ie you’re using PHP5).

Powered by WordPress with GimpStyle Theme heavily modified by Kieran Delaney.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS. 16,543 spam comments ignored.