Sun, Goop and Running

Well it has been a good weekend for weather, lovely sunshine not too hot which was good for the two runs I managed on Saturday and Sunday.



I have learned two thing this weekend. The first thing is that I need to push myself a lot more when I am doing what is supposed to be a training run.



The second is that if you try to make bread in a bread making machine and you forget to put the mixing blade in, then you end up with hot bubbling goop instead of bread!

The Hair Must Go!

My hair has got quite long in the last year and I will need to cut it before I start running races next month. Instead of just getting it trimmed I will be shaving off my hair and beard on the 19th of May in aid of Multiple Sclerosis International Federation and would really welcome your support.



Please take a moment to visit my online fundraising page and make a donation. It's really easy - you can donate by credit or debit card at the following address:

All donations are secure and sent electronically to Multiple Sclerosis International Federation. If you are a UK taxpayer, Justgiving will automatically reclaim 28% Gift Aid on your behalf, so your donation is worth even more. Please join me in supporting Multiple Sclerosis International Federation and a fabulous cause.

Thanks and best wishes,
Kev

Back and Hair

For the last month I have not been in
much of a mood for blog writing or reading. However in the last couple
of weeks I had a few days holiday from work and I manage to get some
relaxation and I am feeling more alive, so I will be catching up on my
blog reading. Today I even got out after work and went for a jog and I
am feeling good after my short run. More details at Beat the Hour

I thinking about cutting my hair short again, it is beginning to
annoy me and it will be no fun when I am running races. However I am
thinking that as my hair is about as long as it has ever been and
likely to be it would be a shame just to get it trimed or chopped
without some sort celebration. So I am toying with the idea of setting
up an online sponsorship form and getting my head shaved for some
charity. My blog pal Ti-Jae over at Tomboy has done this the last couple of years.

Nan, I will get that Meme filled out for you in the next couple of days.

Kev

The Best Job in the World ?

From this BBC news story

Wayne Jones, a professor in experimental alcohol research at the University of Linkoping in Sweden

Okay I guess it will not as exciting as it sounds but one can dream :)



Kev

Comment Meme

Tagged by Waltzingalong @ better living through chemistry



Comment and I will:



1 - Tell you why I friended you.[if it pertains].

2 - Associate you with a song/film.

3 - Tell a random fact about you.

4 - Tell a first memory about you.

5 - Associate you with a character/pairing.

6 - Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.

7 - Tell you my favorite user pic of yours [if it pertains].

8 - In retort, you must spread this disease in your LJ [or blog].

Snotty Coughy Phlegmy

Snotty, Coughy and Phlegmy were the three dwarfs who didn't make it into the final cut of the movie. Walt Disney preferring the mysticism of the number 7 to the round, easy to calculate, figure of 10.

The above is a blatant lie, but what is true is that I have had a cold for over a week and I can't shake it off. I feel terrible in the mornings with all the symptoms above but over the day I feel better, only to start again the next morning, I obviously have the "Groundhog Day" version of the common cold.

My voice is in my boots, as my mother would say, and that means one thing. I spend most of the morning singing, in my world renowned tone deaf way, the first two lines "Ol' Man River" not that I have ever seen the musical that it hails from but Paul Robeson has always been someone I admired.

Looking through the wiki entry it has just struck me that I can't remember a there being a 'Bio-pic' movie about Paul Robeson, is he still too hot for Hollywood to handle?

Photo Fun

Museumr on Dumpr discovered via Photojojo

Progress Bars

How much of modern life is spent watching progress bars?

I know I will spend a lot of time today doing just that as I have 12 Flash
files to upload for my work and they are on average 15Mb. As well as
uploading and downloading from the Internet I have spent many hours
waiting for new software to download to Mac's when I worked in a tech
support role. I remember rooms full of Mac +'s with SCSI hard disks.
Setting up a master system, copying to one hard drive then two, four
etc... All the time more and more progress bars slowly moving.

If I was planning on being buried when I die then I would be tempted to
request a completed progress bar on my head stone, but I plan to be
cremated so there is not much point.

Maybe you should have a 'Life Progress Bar' so you know how much time you have left? It would take the surprise out death, you could plan better, you would save
money by not buying expensive insurance you won't benefit from. Then
again knowing how inaccurate most progress bars are I think it would
add more confusion.

Okay three files uploaded, on to the next :)

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Random Music Meme

Kind of tagged by Waltzingalong @ better living through chemistry

Instructions:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool

• Opening credits: Better Living Through Chemistry : Queens of the Stone Age [Totally random honestly, that is weird!]


• Waking Up: Gays in the Milltary (standup sketch) : Bill Hicks


• First day at school: Hearts of Olden Glory by Runrig


• Falling in love: Telegram Sam by Bauhaus
  

• Fight song: Orpheus by Carly Simon


• Breaking up: Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey
  

• Prom: Our Favourite Shop by The Style Council


• Life is good: Boy About Town by The Jam


• Mental breakdown: Bare by The Cure


• Driving: Working On The Highway by Bruce Springsteen


• Flashback: Vision Thing by The Sisters of Mercy


• Getting back together: Monday by The Jam


• Wedding: Dumb by The Beautiful South

• Paying the dues: Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus

• The night before the war: Alison Gross by Steeleye Span


• Final Battle: Slow Down by The Jam


• Moment of Triumph: Homeward Bound bySimon & Garfunkel
  

• Death scene: We Are The Sleepyheads by Belle & Sebastian


• Funeral song: Super Trouper by ABBA

• End credits: Ghostdancing by Simple Minds

A Long Week

Need I say any more? Okay you persuaded me. :)

This week seems to have had seven days between Monday and Friday. I
have been tired all week and getting my head off the pillow in the
morning has been next to impossble, but that may just be that I need a
haircut :)

I had wanted to write up a 'feature' type article for here this week
but I had to fix a problem with my WordPress plugin and that ate up two
evenings. The plugin issue aside I must say I am not too impressed
WordPress 2.1 it seems to have created problems without a great amount
of extra features I think a couple of extra weeks in development would
have saved everyone some grief. Drupal looks as if it is becoming my
web development base of choice and there may come a point where I look
seriously at moving Darkest Before Dawn to Drupal. I have already
completed a successful experimental of a port to Drupal but currently I
have no compelling reason to make the switch so I will stick with
WordPress.

Tonight I am being very brave and watching SAW if you hear someone screaming it will probably be me.

Congratulations to Laasya on her engagement :)

Will get round everyone's blogs at the weekend take care and if anyone offers you chocolates hold out for the coffee cream. ;)

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Reorganising and Planning

This weekend I have have been, once more, reorganising my computer area. If you have been reading my blog for a while you will know happens at least once a year. I think i have a long term workable solution now. The monitors for my Mac and Linux computers are raised and side by side so I can easily work with both. The boxes themselves are sitting on top of a small cupboard which makes them a lot more accessible than in the past and I have the power block on the wall so it is easy to get at. Most importantly I now have all the desktop space I need for keyboards. mice, books and cups of tea. Here's a pic :)

I am hoping that a comfortable working area will let me get on with some of the many projects that I have under way including Hb and some original posts here at db4dawn. In planning I have posts on Firefox add-ons and the 1970's BBC Tv Series 'Survivors'.



I am doing a lot of development with the Drupal CMS at the moment, at work and for my personal projects. I had looked at Drupal before Christmas but had decided to pursue the Joomla! route. The main reason I have reconsidered Drupal is the extension system, I hope to post a piece about this over at the newly revamped (once again) rickis dot net.



Cya all soon



Kev

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Reflection on a walk

The rain took a break for a few hours today, yay! I was able to get out for a walk and get some photos taken. The light is still not great for photography but I managed to get a few interesting shots. The shot above was taken while laying on what remained of the footpath and looking across the surface of the pond. There are a few other shots including a panorama of the flooded pond on Flickr.

Next week I hope to get out for more walks and possibly runs. I think I am going to have to ignore the weather if I am going to start getting fit.

View from Skye

Today has been another dark, wet and very windy day all over Scotland. In the last couple of months it seems as if there have only been a few days when it wasn't raining and raining hard at that. It gets quite depressing after a while so I like to go through my photographs and remember how nice it can be here when the weather is good.

The view above was constructed from three photographs. It was taken from a cliff view point north of Portree on Skye in February 2005. The water in the photo is the Sound of Rassay with the Isle of Rona in front of the mainland. I don't have a detailed map so I can't at the moment name the mountains but the area is Wester Ross.

Path to Temple Wood

Ballymeanoch_10.jpgOriginally uploaded by Darkest Before Dawn.

I have uploaded some more photos from my summer holiday in Argyll.

The photos in this set are of the Ballymeanoch Standing Stones and landscape in Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, Scotland.

I like this photo because it has a tranquil feeling for me.

I am Man...

... see me search pathetically for stock cubes!

Today I managed to get up before it got dark again, which is a major step forward. I needed a few things from the shops so instead of taking my car and assisting the destruction of the environment. I decided to have a walk as I am in desperate need of some exercise. So I walked to near by Super-Multi-Mega Store (SMMS) which destroys the environment.

On my way there I stopped by my local dealer for 50 grammes of extra hot dried chillies. It is good stuff, a few of them in a chili con carny and you can guarantee your head will sweat.

At the SMMS I got a packet of lentils and a packet of Scotch Broth mix as it is winter and it is time for soup making. At this point I remembered that I needed to buy some stock (bouillon) cubes. Now I usually expect to find stock cubes around where the jars of herbs and spices are or where the gravy granule's are kept but could I find them? Well no, as it happens.

So I start my search pattern, going up and down the rows until I reach the dairy section or the hard goods, nothing. Of course it had now become a 'thing' I must find them and I must do it without assistance mainly because I too scared to ask in case I am told "they are right behind you mate".

Passing the 'Fantastic Sale Offers' or as I would think it would be more honest to title 'Christmas Crap We Couldnae Shift', for the third time I noticed copies of Instant Confidence by Paul McKenna

Now some Instant Confidence is what I could use at this point and more especially when I get to the checkout and my IQ does it usual 100 point dip. However unlike the Super-Multi-Mega Book Shops that destroy the environment this sort of store is not happy about you sitting down in the aisle and reading books. From the infamous 'Duck a l'Orange Incident' I know they don't like you trying out their recipe books with produce from the shop unless you have actually bought the book and ingredients and taken them home first.

So without Mr McKenna's assistance I check throughly all the shelves around me several times and I am at least 50% confident that the stock cubes are not lying in wait to embarrass me and I ask a member of staff stocking a fridge where the stock cubes are. The answer was 'in the far corner of the shop above the freezers'. Of course I should have remembered that in shops with open top freezers the stock cube take up residence there.

Okay I am off to write to the Stock Cube manufactures to point out that their products are not actually cubes.

Finished tinkering…

This entry was originally published at Darkest Before Dawn

.. for now anyway

The two images in the header are now selected at random from a list, the same image cannot be displayed in the two positions. If anyone is interested in the code for this then comment and I will post it. The flickr image strip is now set to display squares as it is neater and it is using the same method as the header images to display either a random selection of images or the latest stream.

The menu buttons are now using a single file with the origin being moved on a:hover to achieve the mouse over effect. This prevents a flash of missing button when the user first hovers over the mouse and prevents the need for pre-loading of additional graphic files.

Kev

New Year, New Theme

This entry was originally published at Darkest Before Dawn

Hope your New Year is going will, mine was kind of quiet until 5:30 this morning when flat upstairs played Chas & Dave’s “Rabbit” at high volume while stomping about. It didn’t go on for long but I have been wide awake since then.

My new theme is based on the work I have done to construct Joomla! themes and only has a small section of code from my previous Jura theme. The 3 Column layout is based on one of the designs by Alex Robinson published under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication it is valid CSS and XHTML 1.1 I have tested it in FireFox and Safari but I have not had a chance to test the theme in IE. I will get this done later today, in the mean time if you spot any faults please comment here.

The theme is not quite finished yet, I want to add a way to display random images from a chosen set in the header and I want to add another one or two buttons to the header, when I remember what I had in mind!?

It has gone quiet upstairs now so I will try and grab some more sleep.