Gone!

Seems I've lost my visitors flags, which is a pity as I had been building up quite a collection.  I've tried all sorts of ways to reinstate them, but the only way I have managed to get them to show is by starting over from scratch.

I started, and now I'll finish

As I said yesterday, there are times when I find that words flow from the keyboard almost quicker than I can type them.   But yesterday I got sidetracked, something I find happens all too frequently these days.  Could it be to do with the increasing years, or is it just that I have not noticed it happening in the past?  Anyway, there are times when I find that words flow from the keyboard almost quicker than I can type them.  There are other times when I sit staring at a blank monitor screen wondering what on earth I can write about.

But does it matter if I have nothing to say?  Is it a sign that my mind is stagnating and I am creeping nearer and nearer to that long sleep?  I don't think that is really the case; it's just that some days I have something that is positively bursting to get out of me - and on other days I haven't.

But why do I get these twinges of guilt on the days when I really have nothing to say?  It's hardly as if the entire world is waiting with bated breath to read my daily pearls of wisdom.  It's just a "me" thing.  Having set up this blog I feel obliged to post as near to every day as I can manage.  And there's no particular reason for that.  I suppose it might have something to do with me being a frustrated writer.  I wish I could write.  I would dearly like to have the ability to write one of those weekly newspaper columns that are all blather and blarney but provide a little amusement and entertainment during the dark and dreary days of winter.  And during the sparkling days of summer as well.  But that is not to be, so I must content myself with blogging a few incoherent thoughts day by day.

At least anybody who happens to drop by can easily click the "next blog" button or the "previous site" arrow and consign these inane dribblings to the depths of cyberspace.

My own enigma machine

There are times when I find that words flow from the keyboard almost quicker than I can type them.  Not that the typing is fast; far from it, as I use just the one finger on each hand, so the words don't really have to flow that fast in order to beat the typing.  Mind you, there are problems if I am for some reason using the laptop computer rather than the big, chunky keyboard that is linked to the 'big' computer.  I don't know why, but I find with the laptop that whole chunks of sentences insert themselves into the wrong places.  I'm sure I don't hit a strange function key or macro, but the cursor still jumps back up the screen to a completely random place.  This means that I might end up with something like:

e laumps overThe quick brozy dog.wn fox j

I feel as though I am typing in a foreign language or a strange code.  Or rather, not that I am typing in that language, but more that what I type is being automatically translated or encrypted.  Weird.

And can you spare a pound for Leo House?

Every little helps

One of our supermarket chains uses that title as a catchphrase in it's TV adverts and when I visited one of their stores this morning I thought of that and it reminded me of a favourite story of mine which I think I have missed posting on this blog.  So here it is.

One morning, just before dawn, a man was walking on a deserted beach.  At least, he thought it was deserted until he spotted, far in the distance, another man coming towards him.  As the light strengthened and as they approached each other, he noticed something a little odd about the other man's behaviour.  The person approaching him kept bending down, apparently picking something up, and throwing it into the sea.  When they got closer, the first man saw that the stranger was picking up starfish and throwing them into the sea.  He asked why.

'When the sun comes up properly it will dry out these starfish and they will die, so I'm throwing them back into the sea.'

'But there are probably millions of starfish on this beach.  What difference will a few make?'

The stranger looked at the starfish in his hand and threw it into the sea.

'It makes a difference to that one,' he replied.

I would like to ask everyone who drops by this page to help make a difference by making just a small donation to Leo House.  It doesn't need to be a lot of money - £5 or $5 would be great.  Remember, every little helps.

 

Back in 1999, I was the President of Brighton Lions Club when we set up Leo House. Because of my position, I was closely involved with what is now a separate charity.  Do take a look at their web site -

but please come back here and use the widget on the left to make a small donation.  I'll start things of with a tenner and it would be good if we can raise £100.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

and I'm getting pretty fed up with it!

One step forward...

...and two back!  At least, that is how it has seemed to me over the last few days.  If I knew Java it might well have been a different story.  I don't mean the island (if it still called that) or the coffee; I mean the script that gives commands to web sites.  What doesn't help is the knowledge that it's all my own fault for not saying 'no' when the then 1st VDG phoned and asked if I would take on the District web site next year.  In fairness, I should add that I did suggest he waited until after the District convention when he could approach the designer of the winning entry in the club web site competition.  I am, of course, now hoist with my own petard, although this was really the outcome I expected, having been reasonably confident that Brighton's web site would win.  I had looked at all the other club web sites in the District and knew that there were very few entries anyway so that was not entirely a case of over-confidence.

So I took a look at the source code for the current District site, a site which has attracted a fair amount of valid criticism, and was horrified at the complexity of what I was looking at.  This was the equivalent of a university text book while I was still struggling with a primer, my knowledge of the basic HTML being very limited and years out of date anyway.  All the same, I usually manage to get it to do what I want even if I do have to refer to the Idiot's Guide.  I made a start on redesigning the site while keeping as close as I could to the look of what is there now.  Part of the problem with it is that navigation is protracted.  I want people to go to what they want in as few clicks as possible, preferably two and never more than three.  The answer, I decided, was to use cascading menus, the sort that one sees with almost any application used on a computer.  I managed to download a Java script that provided a one-layer cascade, ie when the mouse hovered over an item on the menu further options became visible as a drop-down menu.  And it works very nicely.  But I really wanted another cascade so that when the mouse hovers over an item in the drop-down menu a further sub-menu becomes visible.  I even located a Java script that would do that, but I have spent hours trying to fathom how to put the main menu in the right place on the page and how to change the colours to match what I am using.  I've given up, and will just use the Java that works along with basic HTML links.

I've uploaded the front page as a demo to show the cascading menu: the links don't work as nothing else has been uploaded.  It works fine using the Firefox browser, but when I try using IE I get a nasty message saying IE has restricted this pag from running scripts that could damage my computer.  So, maybe it's back to the drawing board.

But the positive news is that the Old Bat has had her plaster cast removed and the wires extracted from her wrist.

I feel a rant coming on

I haven't had one for goodness knows how long so it's about time. Some of the little things that irritate me, in no particular order:

1. The presenter of the late night TV news who signs off by saying, 'Enjoy your evening' - just as the vast majority of her audience are planning to go to bed.
2. So-called "reality" TV shows featuring so-called "celebrities", most of whom I have never heard of and none of whom hold the slightest interest for me.
3. Automated telephone calls from overseas that start, 'Congratulations! You have won...' and go on to invite me to 'press 9 to hear more'.
4. Salespeople on the phone who start the conversation by asking, 'And how are you today?' just as if we were bosom friends who had spoken only a day or two before when he learned that I was under the weather.
5. Shop assistants who ask, 'Anything else at all?'. If there were, I would ask for it. And anyway, 'at all' is superfluous and means nothing.
6. Waiters and waitresses who, when I am half-way through my main course, stop by the table to ask if everything is alright. If it weren't, I would have made a fuss before eating half the meal, and anyway, they don't give a tinker's cuss; they just want me out of their hair so they can pick up the tip they hope I will leave because they have given excellent service by checking that everything is alright.
7. Degrees ascribed to uniqueness, such as 'rather', 'quite', 'somewhat', or even 'entirely'.
8. People responding to the question, 'How are you?' with the words 'I'm good'. I don't want to know if they are well-behaved or the world's worst sinner, I'm asking if they are well or not.

I suppose if I were pressed, I would say that the question 'And how are you today?' asked by somebody I have never before spoken to is the one that grates the most.