Tangential Ramblings

I installed Google Gears shortly after its beta launch a few weeks ago. The only thing I currently use it for is my Google Reader, but I can't help but think that it's missed the point.

The overarching concept is that web applications can be made available even while you're offline. But unless I'm missing something, it requires an active decision from the user in advance of going offline. You click a little green arrow at the top of the site, and hey presto, it goes off and stores a whole bunch of stuff that is needed to present that site to you when you're offline.

But I don't always know when I'm going to be cut off from the internet. Often, I disconnect quickly and unexpectedly (either by choice or technical fault) yet still want to be able to access those applications.

Wouldn't it be better if the activity that ensued when you clicked the green arrow was happening as a matter of course in the background while you're online? Then, when my network connection disappears, I don't miss a beat. I'm simply warned that my information may be a little stale.

Just a thought.

I just caught the 87 bus past Downing Street and the media lawn outside Westminster. Both are teeming with media - camera crews, reporters, bright spotlights and umbrellas to keep them all dry.

I swear: something's going on today, and I won't sleep until I find out what. You'll be the first to know, so stay tuned...

Apparently, bathtime isn't a word. It's either hyphenated or treated as two separate words. Anyway, I'm making it a word. Similar to my use of eleven and twelve mid-sentence. (Incidentally, I've used the word eleven in 22 posts to date (make that 23) and twelve in 25 (26). They come up quite regularly.)

Anyway, just a short post to say that I love bathtime, as does my daughter. She's not reached the try to get as much water out of the bath as possible phase yet, but nonetheless, she seems to personify happiness and contentedness. Which in turn makes me very happy.

My previous post (see below) was quite long. Just after hitting the Blog this! button (that's what the button says), I decided in an instant to click back into the content entry text box, hit CTRL+A (highlight everything) swiftly followed by CTRL+C (copy to clipboard). All this while the next page was loading, over broadband.

That next page was the you've been timed out page. The annoying thing about my blogging software is that it doesn't auto-save partial posts.

Imagine my delight when I could copy my clipboard into a second attempt. I think you can only imagine.

Originally, this post's title had the present participle of the F word neatly nestled in between the and cheek. I removed it for Francis' benefit (NSFW), but I'm often torn in such situations. Now, having raised the very subject of sweary things, a strange urge has come over me to type the C word. Scunthorpe. That'll do.

Back to the point. A few days ago, I was sent a lovely little email from our friends at Ocado, our online supermarket of choice, part of the John Lewis Partnership, don't you know. (My wife practices the John Lewis religion, their Oxford Street store being termed The Mother Ship.)

They informed me that they were introducing a "small delivery charge to some of [their] slots. Charges will affect busy periods but quieter delivery slots will remain free.

"All customers spending over £75 will have the opportunity to choose a free delivery slot at a quieter time of the week, otherwise the charge will be up to £4. If you spend less than £75 the charge will be no more than £6."

(I'd have preferred a semicolon after week, but that's beside the point.) I was grateful, almost eternally so, for the opportunity to choose a free delivery slot at a quieter time of the week, although recall having enjoyed that very opportunity before receiving the email. Indeed I'd had the opportunity to choose free delivery slots at any time of the week, which was more enjoyable still. Overall, I feel the Ocado's elevated prices, their lack of the need for a physical shop (for me at least), and the overall value of our shops (c. £135 spent on each delivery) should together contribute towards a strong argument to allow us free delivery regardless.

Anyway, we chose 9–10pm this evening, the slots between 7pm and 9pm being deemed to fall in a busy period. When the guy arrived at 8.50pm, I wondered whether a surcharge would be levied. (I think I'm safe in assuming it won't. Though stranger things have happened.)

Thinking again, given my annoyance at the very concept of a delivery charge, I was sorely tempted to levy one to the delivery chap in return for hitting our busy period. (In reality, it wasn't that busy, as bathtime was over and the little lady was tucked up asleep. But that's not the point.) Maybe I'll write a letter to Ocado detailing my proposed inconvenience charge.

YouGov's branding seems odd to me. It strikes me that some branding people decided that they wanted to embrace the second person plural, so branded it such. But the people who use the site are, by definition, living life in the first person singular. And as a user, you has a different meaning than was intended by the branding folk. If anything, you for the user could be construed to mean government.

The same could be said of YouTube. And the BBC's email address for sending pictures: yourpics@bbc.co.uk. But not of myspace or my.yahoo.

panoply: a complete and impressive array.

Apologies to Simon for not holding the lift for him on leaving work this evening.

I get very confused between the <|> and >|< buttons. When you analyse the buttons, they make complete sense; but when confronted with the option accompanied by a very aggressive deadline (the lift doors closing), I never fail to fumble for the right one. Tonight, Simon was delayed by this fumbling. I, however, suffered no such delay.

"Dan's nipples are like a money-off voucher for a tin of dog shit."

No context necessary, nor would it be forthcoming.

Below are the most recent comments from Angry Rob, my hosting provider:

• On the list of things that make being a bloke great, this has to come pretty low. Perhaps you're not quiet as much of a bloke as you think you are?
• I suspect they will laugh at you 1.3MP rez-low-tion.
• Hmmmm... depends if you like to eat something akin to dehydrated wallpaper paste (goes right back to paste the moment it hits your mouth) or an alternative that's more natural, tastes better and has some substance. Imbecile for even asking!
• Dude (I use that term lightly - as you are clearly getting even less 'dude' like each day), if you must carry your offspring in a pouch, put it on your back, like nature intended. They can still look forward and see where you're going, but you don't look quiet such a dick and it's better for your back.
• Dan, you've really got to kill all this soppy BS or I'm going to have to stop reading your blog. Come on mate, remember Iraq, climate change, world poverty, the impending bird flue epidemic and the rest. There, don't you feel better already?

He seems very angry at the moment. And somewhat defensive of his manhood, or at least questioning of mine. I'm confident in myself. Are you, Rob? ;)

The only way to do a search from pages within the BBC News site (including the homepage) is to use the search box at the top right. This takes me to a set of results from across the entire BBC web presence. I didn't want this did I? I searched from BBC News, so I wanted search results from BBC News. (It reminds me of the dilemma on Directgov and its predecessor, ukonline.gov.uk, of whether to serve results from the site itself or from the whole of government. Technology limitations meant that my preference of serving site-specific results won.)

OK, so now I'm frustrated, but at least I can use the tabs at the top to refine my results. I click on the BBC News & Sport tab and get the results I'm after. Unfortunately, I can't find what I was looking for, so I decide I want to go back to the homepage and navigate for the page myself. Unfortunately, the BBC hasn't left a trail of crumbs for me to do so. Indeed I am at least two steps from the homepage. I can either click the Back button twice (inelegant to say the least), or I can click on a random result and then use the left-hand navigation to take me back to the homepage.

Getting back home from the search results page is a fundamental requirement, and leaving it out is a major faux pas for the BBC.

(As an aside, here is Hansel and Gretel part 1. Again, about perceived difficulties in getting home.)

Five months and eight days after the Cabinet Office announced plans to cull 551 websites, www.beefyandlamby.co.uk lives on, and is still being advertised on the telly.

In fact, of the first 20 on the BBC's cull list, only three have been closed:

• Bus Priority Resource Pack: now links off to a regional and local transport page on the DfT site
• CycleSmart: links off to the domain site 123-reg.com, although apparently the domain's still taken
• DrugDrive: is now a campaign site within the DfT site

It seems that at least the DfT took the edict seriously.

Anyone fancy trying out the other 531?

Does the flat earth society believe in planal warming? I wonder.

A recent trend, one that was particularly prominent in New York, is to use the word momentarily to mean "in a moment". I've always frowned upon this use, believing it to instead mean "for a moment".

So my view is that the former of the uses is correct, while the latter is wrong:

• She muted the call momentarily to cough up a lung
• I'm just going to mute the call to cough up a lung, but will be with you momentarily

Answers.com seems to ratify my view.

Number 2.5 round the sides, blended into the top, take a bit of length off the top, leave it messy and chop into it. Natural at the back, not square.

It's great being a bloke.

Ever since I can remember trying, this site has come second when searching for my name on google.com. I don't mean when you search for my name itself; I mean when you substitute the words my and name with the names that make up my name, first name and last name. I've always been pipped by www.myname.com.

Well those days are over. I'm now number one in Google's rankings. Huzzah!

A genius video. The concrete mixer and the truck at the end are particularly impressive.

My wife is obsessed with wipes (yeah, predictable joke about me being an ass wipe). Yet tonight's Ocado order baffled me, with three packets of wipes arriving, all different. Here's what we got.

• Dettol 4 in 1 Multi-Action Wipes (48)
• Flash Multi-Purpose Wipes (48)
• Flash Multi-Surface Wipes, now with Flashguard Barrier (60)

All of them double up in quantity if you choose to rip off half a wipe at a time.

Apparently, each different wipe-type serves a specific purpose and house area, mainly according to its accompanying smell.

A colleague recently won a £500 meal at a London restaurant of his choosing for buying some San Pelegrino water from Ocado. Tonight, I was given a 330ml bottle of Highland spring water (still) as a reward for my Ocado loyalty, which was delivered along with our £145 order. And he recently complained of bad luck for not winning the lottery.

Ho hum.

Thanks to Doug for appealing to my sense of humour, and to Jason for his photography and bluetooth skills.

11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000111001

I was bored.

The happiest song moment is in Squeeze's Up The Junction, the line "With little kicks inside her" at 1m25s. Perhaps the saddest song moment is in Squeeze's Up The Junction, "She left me when my drinking became a proper stinging", a mere 19 seconds (or two years) later.

Neither ever fails to spark an emotion in me.

So Google Maps has introduced a cool new Streetview feature, enabling you to see images of the sides of each street as you glide around the map.

I noticed that London is not covered by this feature. So I plan on taking a slightly extended lunch tomorrow to map London. I figure an hour and a half should cover it, equipped with my 1.3 mega pixel camera. I'll do the major bus routes (taking photos from both sides) and then email the photos off to Google for them to incorporate. The 8, 26, 55, 87, 452, 137 should get me 95% coverage, I would have thought..

In yesterday's Metro, we said Charley was born in jail to a prostitute who was later strangled. In fact, it was BB housemate Chanelle. Sorry for the confusion.

Taken from Tuesday's Metro

Which is better? Granary or white?

I wandered up to Sainsbury's this afternoon, with my daughter strapped to my chest looking delightful. On my way there, I overheard quite an attractive young lady whispering to what I assume was her boyfriend.

"Men with babies are so attractive."

I smiled broadly, taking the compliment as intended; she looked sheepish at having been overheard. I'm not sure whether the boyfriend looked pissed at her third party admiration, or petrified at the prospect of a conversation about their impending procreation.

She did have a point: I did look hot!

Bless her. And a lovely, if subtle, article title.

Some more information about the Oregon pi anomaly. In no way conclusive about what or why. But a bit of information nonetheless.