This Cracked Me Up Today

I was on a lesson with a pupil and we were driving through Netherfield in Nottingham. We got held up for a short time because the level crossing barriers were down, and I noticed this white van in front of us.

Pogo The ClownIt was covered in artwork which declared that it was the transporation of Pogo The Clown – some guy who does peripatetic clown work for children’s parties.

What made me laugh was the motif on the bottom left side of the rear doors. It said:

NO BALLOONS LEFT IN THIS VAN OVERNIGHT

I don’t mind giving him a plug, because it looks like he does a lot of worthwhile stuff with kids.

Mind you, I’m a bit confused about what some of his corporate clients would want with a mobile clown unit – but having said that, I used to work for one of them, so maybe I’m not that surprised. I guess he could fill in for a lot of the management when they are away at off-site meetings and things.

Using Facebook Whilst Driving

It doesn’t surprise me – there was this story on Autoblog last week. There is a new menace on the roads: Facebook.

Facebook LogoI’ve mentioned on several occasions (just search for “texting” using the search facility on the right) that the number of people who are obviously texting whilst driving is increasing all the time. But it seems there may have been more to it than I thought.

Now, I’ve got to be completely honest about this. I have never understood Facebook or its appeal. Oh, I’m a member – but whenever I follow a link back to the page it came from I am amazed by the utter rubbish at the other end in most cases.

It is full of sad people having conversations with themselves, or “making friends” with other sad people (which amounts to clicking a button and appearing as a “friend” on their “friends” list, and almost nothing else). Even where there is a page with attempts at sensible discussion on it, Facebook  is not exactly the most navigable system in the world – and it is infested by halfwits who are only there to swear. And who gives a toss whether “Frazer from Hertford likes this”?

Here are some examples picked at random from profiles and Facebook discussions:

Music: Cheryl Cole, U2, Snow Patrol

…here’s a good tip if your feeling sh*t WEAR GLOVES

F*** YOU! 🙂          [censored by me]

finks its time 2 calm down abit now and maybe grow up … actually f*** that il just calm down 🙂          [censored by me]

It doesn’t get any better than this. So it should come as a shock to everyone to learn that the sad imbeciles who can’t live without Facebook are now using it while they are driving! According to Autoblog:

The success of websites like Facebook and Twitter, combined with the rise of the smartphone, has added another dimension to the list of likely distractions.

While calls and texts remain the biggest reason for taking your eyes off the road, the study also listed the applications motorists were most likely to use at the wheel. The largely predictable top five were email, Google Maps, music, photos and Facebook.

And let’s not just single out Facebook here. Twitter lends itself far more easily to being used whilst driving. But the problem is the same.

It truly is frightening that people like this are allowed to keep their licences. They should be banned for life.

Weather Gurus At It Again

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t have another winter like last year. The persistent snow and ice led to me having to cancel quite few lessons.

UK Covered In Snow - Jan 2010But – just like every year – the media is intent on talking things up into a crisis.

This story from the Telegraph today says that Met Office data indicate a milder than usual winter is on the way, although both it and the Met Office point out clearly that long terms forecasts are no longer given (mainly because of the “barbecue summer” forecast where B&Q had to start selling diy Ark kits so people could get about).

That’s not good enough for the Telegraph, though. It had to rake in some people from the Association of Village Idiots – no doubt specially selected for their alternative vibes about the forthcoming winter.

Now, it’s worth pointing out again that the Met Office no longer does long-range forecast. The Telegraph story says so, and the Met Office says so. In fact, the Met Office has just sent out an email alert which says:

Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public; instead we provide a monthly outlook on our website.

Despite this, you may have seen some reports in the media on Thursday, suggesting the Met Office has produced a forecast for the coming winter.

These media reports have based their interpretation for the coming winter on probability maps on our website. However, they have been selective about the information they have used and you should not take these interpretations as a guide to the coming winter. Instead we would recommend using our monthly outlook and short range forecasts.

But this doesn’t stop one Village Idiot declaiming:

“It baffles me how the Met Office can predict a milder-than-average winter when all the indicators show this winter will have parallels to the last one,” he said.

“The Met Office is standing alone here, as ourselves and other independent forecasters are all predicting a colder-than-average winter.”

Personally, I just have a horrible feeling that we’ll get another bad winter. I don’t care about the temperature, but I do care about snowfall.

It has been quite wet recently. I don’t care how “dry” it has been statistically, I know how “wet” it is now (it’s raining as I speak). They’ve already had snow in Scotland, and although the temperature outside today is around 13°C, only two days ago it was as low as -5°C and I was getting ice off the car before starting work two mornings running. But when it is cold, rain can fall as snow.

Fingers crossed.

DSA & SQA Honoured

An email alert from the DSA:

DSA & SQA honoured in road safety awards

An innovative road safety qualification developed by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) in partnership with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) will today receive a prestigious Prince Michael International Road Safety Award.

The Safe Road User Award is aimed primarily at 14-16 year olds. It aims to influence young people’s attitudes to road safety and give them a solid grounding in safe road use before they learn to drive. Holders who go on to learn to drive can take a shorter version of the car theory test. The qualification was piloted at Balwearie High School in Kirkcaldy.

The Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards are presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to improving road safety.

Announcing the award, HRH Prince Michael GCVO said: “I am delighted to present this award. It is a pioneering and ingenious approach to senior school road safety education.”

Jill Lewis, DSA’s Director of Driver Education and Learning said: “DSA is delighted to receive this special award for a special qualification. Not only does the Safe Road User qualification increase the students’ knowledge and awareness about using the roads, ultimately it could also save their lives.

To see the press release in full, please visit the DSA website.

They Crack Me Up

I was on a lesson this afternoon, and we were running through some of the manoeuvres. We'd just done the parallel park and were doing a turn in the road so we could leave the cul-de-sac we were in.

My pupil gets ready, checks all around, then drives over the road to the other side. No problem so far. Then…

[We reach the other side. No gear change (leaves it in 1st), just handbrake]

[Finds the bite, checks all around. Handbrake off and we move forward]

[Footbrake. Handbrake. Finds the bite, looks all around. Handbrake off and we move forward again]

[Puzzled look]

She: Why are we still going forward?

Me: Maybe if we use the right gear?

She: Oh .

She also told me (her actual words were "you'll laugh when I tell you") that the theory test she had booked for the 30th of October is actually on the 30th of November – she made a mistake when she was booking it and only discovered it when the confirmation came through the post.

Just for good measure, we also had a couple of cases of me saying "turn right (or left) at the…" and she trying to turn or indicate before I'd even finished the sentence!

Rooney Stays At Man Utd

EDIT: LOOK AT THE DATE THIS WAS FIRST POSTED. IT IS NOT A NEW STORY.

Well, after the fiasco this week – all the things Wayne Rooney allegedly said about Man Utd, and the fact he wanted to leave – he has re-signed for them.

Wayne Rooney (aka Mr Potato Head)The problem as I see it now, is this.

Wayne Rooney is not as good as he thinks he is. He is not as good as a lot of others think he is (just because you are English and from Liverpool doesn’t mean you are the best in the world). He has a short fuse and – like Paul Gascoigne before him (remarkably like Paul Gascoigne before him, as it happens), he can snap if things don’t go his way.

He hasn’t been playing well. His antics off the field have been shameful, to say the least (and he was not playing well before any of that broke).

He has upset ALL Man Utd fans with his comments and actions over the last week (and they began back in January, from what Alex Ferguson appears to have said).

OK. That’s all the bad stuff. The good thing is: he is now a heck of a lot richer.

So, in order to win back the fans and avoid looking a complete prat, Mr Rooney is going to have to perform

  • better than he has been doing
  • better than he ever has done
  • better than anyone ever gave him credit for

Only time will tell if this is possible or, if it is, if it is enough.

Still, at least it kept Arsenal’s outstanding performance (and Chelsea’s more mediocre efforts) in Europe in the week off the back pages.

Test Pass

Tick!Well done to LR who passed this lunch time with 7 driver faults.

It's come at a good time, seeing as she is currently going through the final stages of redundancy, and being able to drive means she can expand her private business if she has to.

It's also a standing joke that she is (or was) my longest serving pupil. Initially, her mum bought her 12 hours of lessons, and she managed to eke these out for ages. She was in a low-paid job at the time, and when she got a better one things kicked off again, but then stopped as she started doing a lot of overtime.

She kept telling me that she would start again soon. She had a few more lessons, then stopped again. I remember asking her why, and she said she couldn't afford it. Then, there was this classic text exchange:

Me: What happened to all that money you were getting from overtime?

She: Shoes, shopping, handbags.

Anyway, she started up again a few months ago and this time finished it off. She admitted that she had to get the pubbing and clubbing out of her system while she was young.

And I nearly forgot: independent driving section no problem whatsoever. She asked for confirmation, apologised for doing so, and the examiner laughed and said "don't worry about it".

WordPress Messes Up HTML Code

WordpressI’ve recently set up a website for someone, and I decided to use WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

One thing that has always annoyed me with the TinyMCE WordPress editor is that you can’t easily add raw code you your posts and pages – because the editor tries to make sense of them as plain text and strips out all the HTML or CSS tags. So although your initial page might look fine, if you go back to edit it the editor strips all the code out when it loads it up and your design is completely mangled.

I did a lot of scouting and found that the problem is widespread. I found lots of posts on “the solution” – but not a single one with an actual method showing how to implement this apparent solution. If nothing else, you’d think the author(s) of TinyMCE would have fixed the problem by now – all it needs is a setting where nothing gets stripped out of posts.

To make matters worse – and I mean, to make me even more angry over the lack of a clear solution or even a usable workaround – many of the posts and articles are referring to files and code snippets that simply aren’t on your server after installing WordPress and TinyMCE.

Anyway, I found an ideal solution (for me, anyway). The FCKEditor doesn’t mangle your code.

I’m still testing it, but so far so good.

Update 20/5/2011: I should have done this while back, but I’m not using FCKEditor anymore. Although it doesn’t screw up HTML code, I found that it was unsuitable for me in other ways – most notably, it wasn’t WYSIWYG. So it wasn’t as ideal as I suggested above (though it might be exactly what others are looking for).

I am now using Foliopress WYSIWYG, and this one really does work the way I want it to. It is true WYSIWYG in edit mode, plus it doesn’t mangle code. Look:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ />

A Knelling Chair?

One of the most popular topics on this blog is my DIY kneeling chair. It has had thousands of hits.

Death KnellI was amused that it got 8 hits the other day on the search term "knelling chair". That just had to be the same person – I can't see 8 different people searching for that. Well, not unless there is something called a "knelling chair"!

I've said before that the way Google finds things is impressive. This is another good example.

I have also noticed quite a few hits on other stories on search terms involving spurious punctuation marks and very strange spelling. You also get people visiting the site who can't possibly be looking for what they find, but they have used ambiguous search phrases or single words.

I doubt, for example, that the person who searched for "pine" (with quotation marks around it) was really looking for the story about the guy who allegedly inhaled a pine seed and it germinated in his lung!

Listerine Misleading

Over the last few weeks I have lost count of the number of pupils who’ve got in my car with some sort of lurgy (or cancelled because of more serious lurgies). So far, I haven’t succumbed – but it’s only a matter of time.

In fact, I’ve been sneezing the last day or so, and I just feel like something is coming – you know how it goes this time of year. What’s more, over the weekend my tongue decided to cosy up with a couple of those mouth ulcers.

ListerineWhile I was in Asda, I decided to buy some Listerine. After all, anything that is antibacterial can’t do any harm, can it?

Now, I have never used Listerine before. I’ve used other mouthwashes, but I thought I’d get some of the stuff that makes out it is the Big Daddy of mouthwashes on all the TV ads. But it wasn’t that simple: standing in front of the Listerine (and other mouthwash) shelf is like being in an off-licence. You are spoilt for choice.

I used my innate male expertise on these matters. The green one? No – that must be spearmint, and I hate spearmint. The orange one? Well, that would be minty orange, wouldn’t it? That’s right out. The blue one? Yes, that must be peppermint – I’ll take that one.

My God, Listerine tastes bloody awful.

I’m going to use it to creosote the shed. Or it’s going down the sink without going via me. I haven’t decided yet.