Drawing Breath » Misc

Time to Start Updating

Richard — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:12:41 +0000

Poor blog; it’s been languishing, alone and unloved, prey to spammers and so-called SEOs.

Now it’s time to reclaim the poor thing, and start writing again! The spam comments have been purged, I’ve updated to the latest version of WordPress, and reset my broken admin password.

Let’s go, go, go!

It’s the littlest things

Richard — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:50:33 +0000

The walk into work this morning was rather depressing; cold and wet, with heavy cloud being marshalled across the sky by a blustery, persistent wind. But as I past a noisy building site and a busy road junction, I heard a beautiful sound. On the opposite side of the road, atop a tall lime tree, a song thrush was singing. Bouncing and swaying on his windblown perch, his rich, bell-like notes rang out clear and high over the din and roar of machinery, traffic and wind.

It was a small thing, but that small triumph of nature over industry lifted my mood and made me feel a lot better on a miserable day.

Silly suds

Richard — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 09:37:02 +0000

I always wondered, if washing powder is a detergent, why does it feel greasy when it gets wet?

No shit, Sherlock

Richard — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:42:14 +0000

Warning printed on a packet of Sainsbury’s almonds:

Alergy advice Contains nuts

Who’d have thought it?

Never poke fun at a pontiff*

Richard — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 11:30:26 +0000

* Sung to the tune of Monty Python’s “Never be rude to an Arab”.

MediaWatchWatch today reports on an attempt to silence a village web site for their somewhat irreverent reporting of Pope John Paul II’s recent demise, and for publishing a page of (dun dun durr) Pope Jokes (the very idea). The webmaster [sic] of a rival village site (link withheld out of spite) is trying to get an ASBO slapped on the owner of the site for this supposedly discrepant apostolic jocularity¹.

I’m happy to lend my meagre support to the MediaWatchWatch campaign to up the miscreants Google ranking.

1. With thanks to Nisus Thesaurus.

More grist for the 419 mills

Richard — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 13:58:50 +0000

BBC news online reports that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet stowed away more than $13m (£6.8m) in 125 bank accounts around the world.

I’m sure I can expect another round of Nigerian 419 scam e-mails offering me a share in this huge fortune once I hand over a modest transfer fee. I can’t wait to spend it all.

From my cold, dead hands

Richard — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:22:54 +0000

This morning I received an e-mail from someone calling themselves Verisoft LLC, offering $1000 to buy my drawingbusiness.com domain name. A quick Google search revealed that I am not the only one to have received such an offer:

I am interested in purchasing your domain name drawingbusiness.com. I can offer you $1000 for the name. You would be free to keep the current content and move it elsewhere on the web. Please let me know if you are interested.

I’m a little disappointed that I’ve only been offered $1000 (currently about £520), when others have been offered more. I’m also dubious of any offer made from someone who uses a Yahoo! e-mail account to conduct business. On the other hand, it’s nice to know my site is getting enough links to make the URL worth anything to anyone.

Needless to say, I’m not interested in selling my domain, and the offer to buy it has simply prompted me to pull my finger out and renew it for another 5 years. So cheers for that.