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  • Look-a-likes

    Seriously.

    I really don’ t mind being told I look a bit like David Mitchell, because I think he’s funny. But Michael McIntyre? Some people know how to hurt.

    Meantime, I’m busy rehearsing for a new show – Kiss Me Kate, which is next April. Unfortunately, we’re about to start dance rehearsals. Dear god. I don’t like dancing and I’m no good at it. Put it this way, it took me about 10 months to master this dance…

    ..and we’ve only got 4 months for probably far more and far more complex dancing.

    As a wise man (The Killers) once said, “are we human or are we dancer?” Myself, I prefer to think of myself as human.

  • Fantastic news!

    I’m going to be a dad again!

    Scan Photo
    My wife had her 1st scan on Monday and all likes fine. It was estimated to be 13 weeks and 2 days, so will have a due date sometime in June (we haven’t been given a definite date yet).

    No naming yet, and nothing remotely baby-related yet bought, but I’m sure over the next 6 months it all will be! Now, if you catch us calling it “Snappy” then there’s a reason behind this. It’s a sketch by Jo Brand, in which she recounts a story of when she was pregnant. A small child came up to her and asked if her it was a crocodile could she call it Snappy. In fact, according to her book biography her second daughter, Eliza, is known as Snappy.

    On the geek side this means scaling down my mighty computer room, as it will be converted into a nursery. My computer will be relegated to the dining room on a smaller scale. To be honest most of the stuff I use and have connected is simply because I have it, rather than need it, so this will be a great opportunity to re-evaluate it all.

    It’s all really exciting 😀

  • CSS Compression

    I am happy to announce the first of my, of what I hope will be many, online tools.

    I’ve used various tools over the years for compressing CSS, but many miss a trick here or there. Or will simply be so over-eager that they break the nicely validated code. In the end I would manually compress it using a search & replace tool.

    Of course, it’s a lot easier to get a script to do it all for you so step forward my new CSS Compressor.

    Simply upload the file and decide whether you want to remove comments or not (this can sometimes cause some browser compatibility “tweaks” to stop working, hence the option) and that’s it. The output is displayed and you just need to cut and paste it.

    Enjoy!

  • iPhone and being rumbled

    Ha. After my story the other day that the iPhone advert has been banned, PC Pro have an excellent video showing you EXACTLY how quick the iPhone would be doing what they advertised.

    Meantime,  my other story about a software retailer not lowering their prices has been revealed by PC Pro, and they’ve mentioned their name, which I decided not to do. Yes, stand up McAfee. The PC Pro article was also reported by an affiliate, who remained anonymous, but their words reflected my own. It doesn’t help that before this story broke, PC Pro has also published an article about how PC retailers were planning on dropping their prices to reflect the VAT change.

    However, no sooner had they revealed the story about the VAT put McAfee decided to back down. Hurrah for common sense.

    Some choice comments from their forums…

    Do you really want to buy software as complex as a security suite from a company who cannot easily update the VAT rate in their own selling software?

    I think McAfee has a very good candidate for “Most Pathetic Excuse of the Year”

  • VAT rate change. Should we expect anything different?

    Many people thought that retailers WOULDN’T drop their prices to accomodate the drop in VAT rate from Monday. Today, I received an email from a company that I’m affiliated with. I’ve changed the text to hide the guilty parties identity:

    Further to the announcement that UK VAT will be temporarily reduced from 17.5% to 15%, [we] will not be making any changes to the recommended retail pricing of [our products].

    The cost to [our company] of updating its internal systems to reflect the change in UK VAT is such that the company would have been forced to increase the prices.

    What a load of cock. It doesn’t cost anything to drop the prices of your products – just change a figure in database somewhere. It’s just that the VAT rate changes isn’t a huge amount, so companies simply can’t be arsed.

    Strange then that the retailer I work for is currently busting a gut to get the changes out. This is a brick-and-mortar business which will have huge problems getting an entire estate of stores changing the physical labels in time, let alone anything else. But it’s being done because they don’t want to be seen fiddling the customer. In comparison the business above sells software – online or in shops. It doesn’t run any shops and the amount they’d have to do would be minimal.

    It really is pathetic.