Random thoughts on life
GMTV, I think it was ,were talking yesterday about Kate Middleton, girlfriend of Prince William. They were talking about how she had been hounded by the media, how intrusive they were, etc.
So to discuss it further they went over live to their reporter… outside Kate Middleton’s home.
They wouldn’t have spotted the irony if it came and slapped them in the face.
A new year and lots more web work.
First of all, and the biggie, is adding on-line ticket sales to the BMTG site. All of this is being processed by PayPal. It’s now received committee approval and my final design has been tested today… hopefully it will all go live by the end of the week.
The back-end is a MySQL database containing two tables – one containing the ticket details and the other is a control table for the on-line charges. The ticket page then uses PHP to access the database and construct it’s content, including ticket tables, PayPal links and even writing the description at the top of the page to describe any processing fees (they currently intend to charge just a set charge per ticket bought on-line, but in case they want to do something more complex, such as add P&P fees or per-transaction fees, I’ve added that in).
However, how many sales it will generate I’m not sure about.. I remain sceptical (especially as there’s a 50p processing charge).
I’ve also changed the majority of the sites pages as I improve accessibility – nothing visually has changed, but a lot of code has been modified.
Meantime I’ve found a problem with my earlier change to make the YouTube code valid. It seems that when I blank the screen using script.aculo.us code, the YouTube video stays highlighted, getting the way of any photos displayed. This only occurs on one screen (the only one where video and photos are in close proximity) so I’ve had to change that back to the original YouTube code whilst I investigate further.
More poetry fun from the same, fateful day in 1993.
Turbo the Turtoise – a poem in 5 distinct stages.
1. The Fluffy Bit
Turbo the Tortoise
He’s a nippy little chap
Flying thru wonderland
Without need of a map
He soars over jelly trees
Using his jolly jet boots
Shaking the trees
From the jelly to their roots
Passing pink umbrellas
Candy and cotton clouds
All is good and jolly
In wonderland surrounds
2. The Surreal Bit
Turbo was a melon
Harrummph, Harrummph
Wibble, fish
Passing wind thru his toes
He passed logs of windows
Eggwhisk blades a-whirring
Twisted whirls a-blurring
Harrummph, Harrummph
3. The Waynes World Bit
Babe alert, babe alert
Cried the excellent dude most hearty
She’s high on the strokeability scale
And I bet she knows how to party
Shcwing, went Turbo, to the fox
He really felt good about it
I’m not worthy, he did cry
She was no squirly bit
4. The Romantic Bit
Holding her in his muscular arms
He swept her off her feet
Soaring way up in the air
He had in store, a treat
As his arms moved across her chest
She gave a gentle sigh
She raked her hands thru his hair
As he moved down to her thigh
5. The Violent and Sad Ending Bit
Turbo was in love
But as he moved down to her thigh
He got a bit of a shock
As she pulled out an Uzi
Riddling him with bullets
Blood spurting out from every hole
He started up his jet pack
And off went Turbo
The flame from the ignition
Incinirated his one true love
He wondered what he’d done
As he climbed towards the heavens above
Fishing out his machetti
He plunged it thru his heart
His jetpack finally giving out
He plunged like a weighted dart
Splattering on the concrete below
Our friend was no-more
How we’ll miss our dear old friend
The Tortoise call Turbo
5b. The Scooby Doo Ending
Turbo was a resourceful chap
He had a bullet-proof shell
The bullets hit his one-true love
And with a bump she fell
He reached down to help her up
But he noticed something odd
She seemed to be wearing a mask
Which he ripped off of her bod
Revealing the person who had fired
It was an evil guy
He hated all the pollution and noise
That Turbo made as he would fly
“I would have got away with it too”
The evil man sighed
“If it wasn’t for your pesky shell”
Upon which the old man died
Good old Turbo – what a guy
Good riddance to that louse
He’ll never forget his bullet proof shell
Whenever he leaves the house
THE END
Written by my good self, on 4th June 1993. I’m also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
I once knew a fish
His name was Fred
I loved him so dearly
I took him to bed
But poor old fish
The bed was dry
He needed moisture
And eventually died
I bought a new fish
His name was banana
What I didn’t know
Was that he was a piranha
I loved him also
I bedded him too
But while I was asleep
He began to chew
He chewed off my arms
My legs and my feet
When I awoke
I admitted defeat
He took over my life
Bossed me about
If I did anything wrong
He began to shout
I began to hate him
I hatched a plot
I wanted him dead
I wanted him shot
Using my teeth
I held a twelve bore
Squeezing the trigger
Banana was no more
The moral of this story
Off the top of my head
Is love your pets
But don’t take them to bed
I use embedded YouTube, not only in this Blog, but on other sites as well. Recently this has been coming back to bite me as the code that YouTube supply for embedding is not, erm, valid. Or rather it doesn’t validate according to W3C rules.
Which means my sites have started falling foul of various on-line checkers which once were happy to say I had good sites.
Anyway, a touch of Googling and I found my answer – a piece of code that will not break validation. Hooyah. If you embed YouTube videos then this is recommended. Oh, and it apparently works with Google Video as well.
Meantime, YouTube have granted me a Directors account (cue diabolical laughter).
