Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Joke: A rabbit walks into a bar…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Long term sufferers of this blog will remember this email I got sent a while back. It made me chuckle anyway. Here’s another one that came through today that may raise a smile…

A rabbit walks into a pub and says to the barman:

‘Can I have a pint of beer, and a Ham and Cheese Toastie?’

The barman is amazed, but gives the rabbit a pint of beer and a ham  and cheese toastie. The rabbit drinks the beer and eats the toastie. He then leaves.

The following night the rabbit returns and again asks for a pint of beer, and a Ham and Cheese Toastie. The barman, now intrigued by the rabbit and the extra drinkers in the pub, (because word gets round), gives the rabbit the pint and the
toastie. The rabbit consumes them and leaves.

The next night, the pub is packed. In walks the rabbit and says, ‘A pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie, please barman.’
The crowd is hushed as the barman gives the rabbit his pint and toastie, and then burst into applause as the rabbit wolfs them down.

The next night there is standing room only in the pub. Coaches have been laid on for the crowds of patrons attending. The barman is making more money in one week than he did all last year. In walks the rabbit and says, ‘A pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie, please barman’.

The barman says, ‘I’m sorry rabbit, old mate, old mucker, but we are right out of them Ham and Cheese Toasties..’.

The rabbit looks aghast. The crowd has quietened to almost a whisper, when the barman clears his throat nervously and says, ‘We do have a very nice Cheese and Onion Toastie.’ The rabbit looks him in the eye and says, ‘Are you sure I will like it?’

The masses’ bated breath is ear shatteringly silent.
The barman, with a roguish smile says, ‘Do you think that I would let down one of my best friends. I know you’ll
love it.’
‘Ok’, says the rabbit, ‘I’ll have a pint of beer and a Cheese and Onion Toastie.’

The pub erupts with glee as the rabbit quaffs the beer and guzzles the toastie. He then waves to the crowd and leaves….

..NEVER TO RETURN!!!!!!

One year later, in the now impoverished public house, the barman, (who has only served 4 drinks tonight, 3 of which were his), calls time. When he is cleaning down the now empty bar, he sees a small white form, floating above the bar.

The barman says, ‘Who are you?’, to which he is answered, ‘I am the ghost of the rabbit that used to frequent your public house.’

The barman says, ‘I remember you. You made me famous. You would come in every night and have a pint of beer and a Ham and Cheese Toastie. Masses came to see you and this place was famous.’

The rabbit says, ‘Yes I know.’

The barman said, ‘I remember, on your last night we didn’t have any Ham and Cheese Toasties. You had a Cheese and Onion one instead.’

The rabbit said, ‘Yes, you promised me that I would love it.’

The barman said, ‘You never came back, what happened?’

‘I DIED’, said the rabbit.

‘NO!’ said the barman. ‘What from?’

After a short pause. The rabbit said…

‘Mixin-me-toasties.’

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Google Street View and the erosion of freedom

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Does it surprise anyone that a government quango (UK’s Information Comissioner) has declared the use of Google street view is not a problem? It’s not like our present government has any slant towards surveillance and privacy intrusion is it? David Davis was right; there is a slow but certain erosion of freedom in this country.

Google Street View, harmless enough out of context, is merely the thin end of the wedge.  How long do you suppose it will be before we’ve moved on to live HD video feeds for street view? 10 years? Less? Do you think that would be harmless too? If the government decided to store the data from all those feeds, would that be OK as well? After all, if you’ve done nothing wrong, why should you have anything to fear?

It’s the ‘boiling frog’ principle. Somewhere there has to be a line. I’d draw it here, others perhaps in a few years time…

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WEB: Anyone for ice cream?

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007


Just finished a little site for www.mrwhippyicecream.co.uk

If you’re in the Stockport region check out what the area’s best ice cream man has to offer!

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RANT: TV - Help! My dog is fatter than me!

Friday, March 9th, 2007

BBC3 this one I think. It was basically about owners of dogs that feed them so much they are overweight.

There is simply no excuse for this. If you are feeding an animal that much, that it can barely move, has trouble breathing - you may as well be kicking it about or stubbing your cigarettes out on it…

If you see some great trundling behemoth of a dog while you are out walking yours be sure to stop the owner and tell them what a mindless, cruel bully they are. It is a laziness of the worst kind. A complete lack of self discipline. It should not be tolerated.

If people saw a starved dog, its ribs showing, frail and cold being walked by an owner no one would have much of a problem telling the owner how wrong they are. However, for some reason, if its fat we don’t have quite the same social conscious. Why?

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TECH: Dodgy RSS feed from Blogger - workaround

Monday, March 5th, 2007

In case anyone else is having a problem with the RSS feeds…

Blogger has suddenly, and without warning, switched its RSS feeds back to Atom formatting. If, like me, you parse your feed into headlines on other pages (e.g. www.benfrain.com/writing.php) or specific feed readers require RSS you may have a problem.

Blogger have been made aware of the issue by many users but in the meantime, for an RSS version of your feed use the following link where the number is the Blogger ID of the Blog you want to link to…

http://www2.blogger.com/feeds/5893689020155462044/posts/default?alt=rss (the numbered part is my own blog id - substitute it with your own)

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TV/POLITICS: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

For many months I have been a little worried at the accepted ’story’ for global warming. By this I mean the almost evangelical crusades of seemingly all and sundry telling the populace that Global Warming is the product of man. Or, more specifically his carbon emissions.

The propoganda surrounding this theory is so wide and heavily enforced that we enjoy a political climate (no pun intended) whereby any failure to tow the line is greeted with derision and any opposing suggestion by differing members of the scientific community is met with fierce objection.

It would seem at times that we (and I can only speak for the UK here) seem so subservient to the ideologies peddled by the media and government we have lost any degree of objectivity. The bleating from the brainwashed masses is becoming reminiscent of the lower classes in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’.

However, one shining beacon, offering some glimpse of hope and breadcrumb of kudos to opposing ideas comes in the form of a film on Channel 4 this Thursday evening entitled ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. I have not seen the film but the description given in the TV guides indicates it argues the case for the alternative theories in this arena.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they are right but we must surely support Channel 4 for having the even handedness to offer an alternative view on the subject. Especially at a time when our so called ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’ seems so institutionally biased as to border on becoming an Orwellian Bog Brother.

Let’s not become victims of the carbon emissions zealots, with all the political agendas their cause now encompasses (air line fuel tax, road tolls, pay per mile etc) without at least giving some time to the flip side of the story…

Click the link below for more info on the programme.

The Great Global Warming Swindle, Channel4, Thursday 8th March

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WEBSITE: broadoakevents.co.uk now live

Monday, February 12th, 2007

Broad Oak Events are a UK event management company and organise all sorts of cool events for corporate clients. I built the last website for them in 2003/2004 and things have moved on a bit since then, web design wise. I’ve just finished uploading a 2007 re-design of broadoakevents.co.uk. I’ve made a case study of this one so you can see all the improvements that have been made. Head over to Case Study to find out all about it.

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WRITING: Digital Video tutorial in shops

Monday, February 5th, 2007


The final installment of my tutorial series on DVD Studio Pro and Compressor for ‘Digital Video Magazine’ should be in the shops now. It’s part 6 of 6 and covers final burning of a project.

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TECH: OSX - ‘Minimise all’ or rather ‘where’s my desktop’?

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

As a user of OSX on the mac since day one, a problem that a lot of newcomers to the system come across is the absence of a ‘minimise all’ feature. Windows actually solves this problem perfectly with the ’show desktop’ button in the taskbar section. As far as I am aware there is no similar graphical way of performing this action in 10.4 but there is certainly a keyboard shortcut…

Option-Command-M

You could also set a Expose hotspot to do the same thing but personally, I have always found Expose a bit ‘gimmicky’. If anyone knows of a way to add a button into the doc to do this, be sure to let me know! Readers may also wish to take a list of other useful keyboard shortcuts for OSX, you can find them in the following Apple article… http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459

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