Sunday 30 August 2009

1,230,939 more needed!

So, how many nukes are needed to destroy humanity?

And what's more, I'm never not drinking again seeing as teetotallers are more likely to be depressed.

The following picture is up at the gents at The Green Dragon with "If you were around in 1919 (just before prohibition started) you might have seen the following poster." above it and "Now honestly, would you quit drinking?" below:

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Dublin Core

I'm not a great fan of metadata in the context of HTML, I really am not! When it is mentioned I get all sorts of visions of seedy little SEO guys playing with the placement of words in the head of HTML pages and getting excited by a 0.0001% increase in PageRank... makes my blood run cold and makes me feel not just a little poorly that does. Metadata on the whole is okay mind, information about information is how the Semantic Web will come about, but for the sake of SEO it's just not cool and puts me in mind of Witch Doctors demanding sacrifice to ensure a fruitful harvest.

So metadata doesn't have to be evil. Just like some Evangelical Christian like Harry Potter books/films, some metadata is a cool thing and will help intelligent agents of the future parse data and produce relevant information.

I've found the Dublin Core metadata editor and the Dublin Core Assistant are invaluable when it comes to generating metadata which isn't quite so nasty and, dare I say it, unclean.

The DCMI is an independent body which is seeking to standardize metadata and seems, at its heart, to be academic in focus rather than business orientated so - while I appreciate that some people use their websites to generate sales - while a purely business orientated way of adding metadata things leads me back to thinking of those scruffy, sweaty, slightly shambolic buggers crouched over their keyboards and frantically checking their PageRank after each tiny, little, minuscule iteration... using the DCMI's Dublin Core allows my academic leanings to embrace it and, hopefully, improve PageRank as well.

Leo Laporte covered this issue in a recent episode of the Tech Guy (check for "Hour 2") and I was impressed, especially with the 1500 character limit.

Thursday 20 August 2009

Summer Holidays

We're just back from Compton Durville. We went from the 11th to the 18th of August and we sure did fit a lot in in that time:

Did I say that I did all the driving while we were away? No? Well... I did all the driving while we were away (except for a little bit when we'd stopped at a nice pub!).

Sunday 2 August 2009

Barny's Stag Do Results

This is how you do it!

Went to Anglia Karting Centre for Barny's Stag weekend (as well as doing lots of other things) and I did pretty poorly. The results for the shooting section are thus (The shooting was divided into three sets of ten pigeons, the scores are in the far right column and totalled at the bottom. It would have helped if I'd have figured out that I needed to close one eye before my first set of ten):

Dom's Clay Pigeon Shooting Score
12345678910Total
00000000000
10001100115
00101011015
          10
My Shoulder was black 'n' blue!

These are my lap times for the karting itself:

1 - 0:45.092 - 0:40.743 - 0:38.374 - 0:37.425 - 0:37.33
6 - 0:39.677 - 0:37.778 - 0:40.459 - 0:38.8410 - 0:40.07
11 - 0:37.3912 - 0:37.8413 - 0:37.9714 - 0:39.0015 - 0:50.52
16 - 0:39.8917 - 0:39.2018 - 0:38:5819 - 0:37.8820 - 0:38.65
21 - 0:38.6722 - 0:37.7323 - 0:39.7824 - 0:38.9125 - 0:39.01
26 - 0:37.2127 - 0:36.5528 - 0:38.4229 - 0:40.0530 - 0:37.35
31 - 0:36.82    

I started out in 5th place but remained in 7th place except for laps 10 through 14 when I got to 6th.

Gimp Extrude? Blargh!

This was my 1st attempt using Inkscape and it involved my nice bought typeface being "Put on Path" of a bezier curve then copied and moved down a little with the two layers being filled with different colours:

First attempt

My 2nd attempt - after trying and trying and finally failing to find a Extrude Filter for The GIMP (thus the "Blargh!") - involved a different program's extrude function but with the same two colours but it is ever so much better:

Second attempt

The 3rd, and I think final, attempt used the same programs extrude function but with lighting effects. Much better and will hopefully stand out ever so much more:

Third attempt

And here, just because I like animations, is all three combined with the power of The GIMP:

All three attempts

What is the Hex value of "MAILBOX RED" from B&Q? After taking a picture of the paint with the lid off and checking the hex value using the dropper tool it looks to be #FF2718, or rgb(255, 39, 24), and not #FF0000 as I was expecting.

Forth attempt

Gold is apparently #FFD700 (rgb(255, 215, 00)) or #FFCC33 (rgb(255, 204, 51)).

Gold:

Fifth attempt with gold

UMM Gold:

Sixth attempt with UMM gold

Last one for now:

What it should look like!