so far, a piece of bread, a dead baby blackbird and some kind of rodent (also pre-dead, thankfully). These are the presents of the last 24 hours. The last one arrived in the last 5 minutes.

The bread was amusing. We heard her do the victory blorp last night, and were worrying about what kind of animal she was going to present us with. So I switched the outside light on to have a look. She was crowing over a small white square. Closer inspection revealed that it was, in fact, a small white square of bread. We took that as a hint that she was hungry and put down some food.

This morning, a dead baby bird was noticed, on The Precious Rug. No sooner was this removed when she reappeared again, with some kind of rodent in her murdering mouth. It was too big to be a mouse, too small for a rat. I didn’t get a chance to count its toes, so uncertain if it was a shrew or not. It was dropped on the same square of The Precious Rug, that she’d dropped the bird on. Damnable creature!

It’s a lemon on a ladle.,
originally uploaded by synx508.

For some time now /dev/husband has been wanting a ladle. So we finally purchased one. It is hanging on the wall in the kitchen with a lemon in it. I kid ye not. It is now on its second lemon, as the first grew elderly and had to be put to sleep.

From: Bragg, Kathy
Sent: 05 April 2007 11:34
To: $Employer_Global_List
Subject: IT support 12.00-13.00

Hi,

the IT department (me) is going to lunch from 12.00-13.00 today, so if you’re going to break anything, please schedule this for before or after this time. Should anything really disastrous occur, that you think I can help with, please call 0789404**** and summon me back.

Kathy Bragg
Systems Developer
$Employer_Name

I’ve been idly perusing the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and am slightly concerned by one of the provisions:

Duty of person responsible for animal to ensure welfare
(1) A person commits an offence if he does not take such steps as are reasonable in
all the circumstances to ensure that the needs of an animal for which he is
responsible are met to the extent required by good practice.
(2) For the purposes of this Act, an animal’s needs shall be taken to include—
(a) its need for a suitable environment,
(b) its need for a suitable diet,
(c) its need to be able to exhibit normal behaviour patterns,
(d) any need it has to be housed with, or apart from, other animals, and
(e) its need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease.

This concerns me, not because I want to mistreat my cats (although that’s not what *they* say when the Wrong Food has been provided..), but because I’m concerned about part C.

Does this mean that you can no longer keep a cat totally indoors, as that’s hardly normal behaviour for a cat, and what about the fact I put a Liberator collar on her to stop her eating every single baby blackbird she can find? That’s cramping her style somewhat.

While most of the provisions of the Act are long overdue, and much needed, I’m a bit concerned that this puts a little too much power in the paws of my cat. There is insufficient detail as to what constitutes ‘normal’ behaviour. I’ve been careful not to leave the information up on screen in case she sees it and there will be no discussion about it in this house, but I’m worried a neighbour might let slip and then she will be unstoppable. “Yes it’s normal for me to be driving your car, get out of my way puny human.”

I’ve just been sent a copy of the contact list for our major client. Listed within are instructions as to how to navigate the automated switchboard to reach various people.

As some of you may know, I’m in the throes of redesigning the software our company uses to manage its contracts/contacts/operations and stuff. What didn’t occur to me was to build in some facility for storing pathways through switchboards. Maybe I’ll just make the telephone field a bit bigger…

It seems to me that I’ll never be done designing, never mind building - there’s always something that no-one thought to tell me, or that I didn’t question sternly enough what I was told.

This is one of the thoughts that stops me from being self-employed: I’d never be able to get the full picture out of the users, not being fully immersed in the situation, so I’d never be able to design something that matched exactly to what is required and I’d be so fearful of making a shoddy system that I would be quite unable to produce anything at all for fear of it being unhelpful. That tells you too much about me, I suspect.

Having said that, I did spend some time working on a system for a local council, and managed to conquer my fear of producing Bad Things enough to deliver a system that seems to have made them happy. It would be too much to expect *two* such happy outcomes from freelance work..

Maybe I’m just too much of a perfectionist, but everywhere around me I see the results of bad software causing people to have to do daft things and I’d never want to do that to anyone. The infamous doom-system that I babysit here has a screen that I can’t even begin to fathom how to use, and apparently you can’t add more than one entry at a time, you have to close the screen and go back in every time. Personally, that would make me stabby if I have a pile of 50 things to process, but apparently ‘it’s always been like that…’ so it’s okay. No damnit, it’s not okay. If we put up with things like that then standards won’t ever improve.

I learned today that one of the more pleasant and amusing members of our company is off to fulfil her dream of working with her twin sister on her glassworking hobby and hoping to make a business out of it. I’m jealous beyond all measure.

There appears to be yet another reason why I am cheerful about running Ubuntu Linux: not because it’s pretty and runs nicely on my laptop (better than XP does), but because I don’t have to sit here widdling myself everytime I open my web browser. Seriously, Windows makes me nervous. I use Firefox, with the NoScript extension and use the McAfee Site Advisor thingy, but still I’m nervous.

Not because of the quality of the code (hey, mine isn’t perfect either) but because it’s the ubiquitous operating system and therefore the target of choice.

I’ve always maintained that there is a certain level of stupidity beyond which you should not be allowed near a computer. In the past, the skill level required to do anything useful on a computer made this self-regulating. Now dear old Windows, with its lowest-common-denominator approach and attempt to garner as much market share as possible, has lowered the bar so far it’s now nothing but a trip hazard.

The problem is, you can generally either have something that is easy to use, or you can have something that is secure. Compromises need to be made if you want to tip the balance in either direction. Having the same password for every login prompt is easy, but it’s not secure. Having different passwords made up of random letters, numbers and punctuation is secure, but it is not easy. Unless you’re a robot. Phil?

Making a computer so easy to use that anyone and their cat can get on ‘this internet thing’ has made life a lot less secure for the rest of us, as suddenly there’s a whole world full of people with computers, with big ‘kick me’ signs painted on their backs. So it’s tempting to search for exploits, and write malicious code, because there’s such a herd to aim at. Even blindfolded, you’re sure to hit someone..

I don’t blame Microsoft for spotting a crack in the door and wedging an elephant in it, it does make good business sense to do what they’ve done. Or does it? Suddenly they have a planet full of customers who are waking up and realising that they have a bullseye painted on them and are getting paranoid. Not paranoid enough to learn how to browse safely, but paranoid enough that Microsoft realise they need to do something to make people feel securer. Hence Vista. (I’ve not tried it, and won’t until it works.)

The trouble with Windows is that Bill’s plan worked too well. Software houses have written software that runs only on Windows, and by getting businesses dependent on this software have ensured tie-in to Windows almost as a by-product. I’m a case in point - I develop things using MS SQL server, and MS Access (and other bits of Office). I can’t not have Windows installed. I use those tools to develop with because that is what my employer requires. Because they run Windows. It’s all very clever, and all very dangerous.

The computer systems of the world are dangerously inbred and I’m not really sure what we can do about it.

As some of you may or may not know, I’m currently attempting to trace my family tree. I seem to be mainly using Ancestry.co.uk and enjoying myself greatly. Not to say that there aren’t a fair few changes I’d personally make to Ancestry’s software: it’s good, but could be better.

Having found the particular entry I wanted in a census, I was idly flicking through the other pages and it occurred to me that it would be really fabulous to have a map of London, with a layer for every point in time that there is data for, and be able to virtually wander round the map and visit each dwelling and see the layers of people that lived there over time. I don’t even want to begin to think about how challenging that would be to do, but I’d like someone to do it.

I’m a great fan of Lush and have been for many years. I am endlessly taunted by their gorgeous array of soaps, knowing as I do that I dislike soap - even theirs - and the way it leaves my skin all rubbery-taut.

I’m not sure then why I decided to order some random items from Althaea Soaps and Herbals, a lovely lady in America who hand makes soap from Marsh Mallow and other yummy ingredients.

I am so glad I did. My delicate flower of a husband cannot tolerate most cleansing products but her Mr X Angry Skin Soap is not only tolerated but actively enjoyed.

Also fabulous is the Oatmeal, Honey and Milk variety of the Althaea sugar scrub. Not to say that the other varieties aren’t fabulous too, it’s just I’ve only tried that one. So far. I shall definitely be back for more, and shall try more flavours. It’s been tricky not to keep sniffing my own skin all day.

Melanie ships to the UK so it’s not just a treat for you Americans. Seriously, try some. I’m a total soap convert now.

In a desperate attempt to prevent the proliferation of sticky notes in the around-the-monitor department, I added a feature to our system to provide an electronic version - available from the toolbar  - where users could store these scraps of information, with the added benefit that they could now copy and paste them.

It was well received, judging by the table contents. One entry amused me greatly - from a user who hadn’t read the email explaining the use and purpose, and discovered the new menu option on his own (it should be noted that ‘1154′ is the name of one of the screens in the application):

“JMC Vessel Red Dwarf Log 26/02/07
The scutters have just found this facility on Level 1154. Rimmer is convinced it’s some form of alien life. Will monitor over the next few days, then jetison as a waste pod if Kryten is unable to connect his groinal attachment.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf
Log Addendum 02/03/07
Kryten has reverse-engineered the particle flow accellerator using spares from the android cargo ship we picked up last month. We’ve lost most of the functionality but the memory dumps are very effective for recording notes. Rimmer is dissapointed he couldn’t blast it with the phaser guns.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf Log 06/03/07
Ace Rimmer and The Cat are down in engineering to investigate the blockage in the soup dispensers. Last time they were gone for three days. He’s such a smeg head.The laundry deck’s now back on line and Kryten’s caught up with the ironing but I wish he hadn’t put such sharp creases in my boxers.
Lister

JMC Vessel Red Dwarf
Log Addendum 07/03/07
Rimmer and The Cat got back this morning. Bad News. We’re down to out last 4000 poppadums.
Lister”

I’ve set up a blog for our marketing people to start actually putting some content on our company website, and the first thing they did was complain that their first post looked strange on the blog.

Hmm, says I and had a look at the source. Full of Microsoft proprietary style information. I realised pretty quickly that he’d pasted it in from a Word document. Why? I don’t know, I really don’t. I though the Wordpress WYSIWYG was pretty user-friendly. Clearly only Word is inside the comfort zone at the moment. This will change, eventually, but in the meantime, there is a hidden feature in Wordpress 2.1 (I’ve not upgraded yet!) that will make life easier for my marketing guy.

In the visual editor, hit alt-v (IE) (alt-shift-v in Firefox) and you get a sekrit menu appear, one of the options being ‘paste from Word’. So clearly he’s not alone in his clinging to Word as an editor…