Author: Maleghast (Page 17 of 38)

Remember the “Keep Music Live” stickers, keychains, mugs etc that the Musicians’ Union used to (do they still?) do?

Well, I saw this excellent keychain on a fellow passenger’s guitar case on the Tube this morning and just had to snap it…

In other news, had a lovely weekend, placed my flat (in Reading) with a letting agency, put more stuff in storage and got something out of there for my borher, and generally had a lovely time.

Can’t wait for Friday – Belgium Ho!

This is very much a first try at masks – the bottom left-hand corner used to be far too light, so I made a mask in PS and darkened it…

As is often the case these days, I do not really have time to write a long post, so here is a photo instead:

Suffice it to say that I had a lovely weekend, in no small part due to my lovely wife, smashing daughter, and a very enjoyable visit from some lovely firends.  I am blessed – it seems that the best purpose my blog(s) now serve is providing me with a useful mechanism to ensure that I don’t take it all for granted 🙂

We all know (well the coders amongst us so anyway) that while we might be very fond of PHP, it does not do Arrays properly.

I could go into great detail, but basically there are historic (and no doubt design) reasons for the way in which PHP handles the most useful of data structures, and while often very handy, there are times when I long for the whole thing to just work!

Arrays in PHP are all __actually__ hashes, and are only treated as Arrays if they have numeric keys that begin from 0.

I just wasted 2 hours of my life having forgotten the last point of the above. I was unable to work out why two apparently identical arrays were rendered into very different JSON by json_encode(). Well, it turns out that all I had to do was marshall the Hash with numeric keys (that I think I could be forgiven for expecting to behave as an array) into a fresh array (staring from 0), and hey presto!

I hope that someone else who is fighting with this delightful little idiosyncrasy will benefit from my having laid out my pain and dumbness for all to see…

That is all.
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I snapped this on the way home and had to share 🙂

So the government has overhauled ePetitions – great…  I’ve got to be honest I’m not exactly 100% behind the focus-group come popularity contest of the general public influencing policy so directly, even if there are only 6 days available on the current parliamentary schedule for the next year upon which matters raised on ePetitions could be debated (*from the BBC News website article on the subject).

Still 2 things have come out of this so-called development…

1. The Government need to stop being in charge of anything to do with IT – the site is already incapable of coping with the Day #1 traffic-spike, despite the same thing happening to the Crime Map site last year… *shakes head*

2. Paul Staines (a.k.a. Guido Fawkes) has clearly had his course of LookAtMe Disease step up a gear.  Why do I say that?  Well, it would appear his first thought upon having a new ePetitions site available to him was to play to every stereotype of his adopted position as right-wing reactionary everyman with an internet connection; he has put up a petition requesting (essentially) that the Government bring back hanging.

Now I am all for free speech, and I believe that lively debate under public scrutiny is a cornerstone of an open, progressive and broadly democratic society, but this action on his part smacks of wanting to pick a fight rather than actually attempting to serve a deeply held political belief.  Sure, Mr. Staines may indeed be a hate-filled bully who believes that the risk of an irreversible miscarriage of justice is acceptable as long as he can pull the lever on paedophiles and cop-killers, but I have a feeling that as a small-government conservative with “free markets” tattooed on his unmentionables, he probably does not really believe in advocating a course of action that would expose the state to greatly increased public spending – right?  (Rational moral arguments against state-sponsored homicide aside, of course).  I mean if you are going to be a bark-at-the-moon pedagogue the very least you can do is pick your soap-box moments so that they are consistent with the rest of your politics, right?  Well, for my money if you don’t you do forfeit the right to be treated with any respect or even the veneer thereof, so to that end:

Mr. Paul Staines, you are hereby found guilty of being a second-rate attention-grabbing pseudo-journalist and a pedagogue.  Your actions and your output, such as they are, belie the truth that you are not interested in being a real part of any political process – you simply want the spotlight, no matter how far beyond the bounds of taste, ethics or sense you need to go.

Journalists report the news, columnists muse and editorialise about the news, but no one of any worth or stature has ever manufactured the news so that they can write about it or worse still, as in your case, write about it and prance about in the spotlight.

You are a fraud.

Please share this with anyone that you think might be prepared to spread the word – as far as I am concerned this individual’s “good run” in the blogosphere is in severe need of being curtailed, and I’m more than willing to bet that there are more people on this side of the issue (even from the right-wing politically) than people who can or will support this fraction of a man.

Also, for those who would like to balance the scales, here is a link to an ePetition that is diametrically opposed to the one Mr. Staines has created (it was put up specifically to counter his petition, though not by me).

This weekend, just gone, Lee-Anne, Olivia and I went to investigate the Kent Wildlife Trust site down the road from where we live.

Most of the pictures I took (of the wildlife) were not up to much, but this one; well let’s just say I’m very pleased with this one…

I may post a nice one of Olivia as well, it just depends…

Well, here we are, I’m finally posting something on (one of) my blog(s), and yet I am really only casting about for favours…

Basically I need a couple of able-bodied, strong and willing volunteers to help me load a van in Reading and unload it in Tunbridge Wells, on Saturday the 16th of July.

I am not going to lie to you, this will be knackering.

On the plus-side, I will feed and water you (within reason, I’m not laying in caviar, blinis and Dom), and if you are interested in meeting my daughter, you will be welcomed to a braai at our house (more food and beer – did I mention that I have good Belgian beer that my brother imported for me last week..?), and offered crash space (with the caveat of there is a baby in this house you may be woken), and a lift back to Reading if that’s where you’ve come from – i.e. you’ve come back in the van with me after meeting me in Reading – as getting to Reading by train from Sevenoaks is a real ball-ache, plus I may need to meet an electrician on the Sunday.

Please let me know if you’re interested.  Apart from the free-food fringe benefits, I will also be in your debt on a personal level, and more grateful that you can imagine – well ok, you might be able to imagine it, but you catch my drift, no?

I’m sure that there are people who think that my wife and I are crazy for bringing our 5 week old daughter to Download, but the simple truth is that we both really wanted to see bands that are going to be here, and at 5 weeks old our Little bundle of joy is way too young to be baby-sat for a long weekend; forget that there’s no way either of us is ready to surrender her to someone else anyway!

Right then, so day one of Download achieved, and how did it go? Well it ROCKED! Both Korn and Pendulum were awesome, and more to the point O enjoyed them both 🙂

Ok, bed now…

Hello All,

Just a quick note to let anyone out there who might want to know, that Lee-Anne and I have a beautiful baby daughter!

Christine Olivia Godby, who will go by Olivia, was born at 0718h on the 6th of May.

My amazing, courageous wife who has become even more amazing in my eyes now that I’ve witnessed the process and now that she has given me such a perfect and wonderful gift as our daughter, is in fine health (if a little tender), and Olivia is also doing very well.

Looking forward to introducing y’all to my daughter at some point soon!

*VERY PROUD DAD / HUSBAND*