Bit of a departure for me this week – the quote in the title has absolutely no connection to the content of the post whatsoever. I spent an age trying to find a good quote, but I just couldn’t find one. Seeing as how life really is too short, and I have better things to do with it, I decided to that as this one made me laugh it was as worthy as anything else.
All that is my way of saying “don’t bust your brains looking for a connection, ’cause there ain’t one”. If you want to tell me what film it’s from though, go ahead 🙂
(For newer readers, each week the Sunday Roast has a quote in the title, and that quote usually has at least a tenuous link to the content of the post. They make look arbitrary but, this week aside, they aren’t. And you get Brownie Points, and sometimes cookies, if you guess correctly).
Apparently, the government is reviewing whether ‘core British values’ should be part of the curriculum for 11 to 16-year-olds. My first question is this: what on earth are core British values? A certain love of fish and chips, curry, an inability to shine at any sport (even the ones we invented), and irresponsible behavior at football matches? Most people of one group or another will be able to tell you something of their core values. The Cornish will have a good idea, as will the Scots, the Irish, and let’s not forget the Welsh! But to be British? That one I can’t help you on. I can’t believe I’m about to agree (partially) with what a Conservative said, but Boris Johnson was partly right when he said we need to teach British History. Learn anything about British history and you will discover that to be British is to be a mix of everything. It is to take bits and pieces from everywhere, and to learn from everyone (I wonder how many staunch Jingoistic pensioners live in bungalows (Hindi), drink tea (Chinese/Indian) or coffee (African), eat chocolate (South American), watch TV (Scottish), use the telephone (again, Scots), and enjoy pasta (Italian). The list could go on).
I’ve not tried this yet, but this song tapper could be so useful! Especially as I’m always getting obscure songs stuck in my head, but can’t sing/hum to save my life, so have no way of identifying them.
I can’t remember if I’ve linked to this great tool before or not, but if you are on the look out for a new (Blogger) design, look no further than the Firdamatic: the design tool for the uninspired webloggers.
Performancing has a piece on bug check your blog. I must admit I’ve been a bit of a chicken and haven’t done this to Bright Meadow in a while. I just don’t want to know what’s not correct – I just know if I start on one thing, the entire house of cards is gonna come tumbling down. Definitely a case of do as I say, not do as I do!
For all you photobloggers out there, Kristin has a great tutorial on how to set up a photoblog on wordpress. Even if you don’t want to set up a photoblog of your own, do go drool at Kristin’s own photoblog. Pretty pictures!
A while back I wrote something on the need (or not) for an ‘About’ page. If you’re still in doubt, read what Brian has to say on the topic. (Also, writing a good ‘About’ page is harder than you’d think. Still not happy with my own. Grr).
Stowe first brought them to my attention. Steve decided there needed to be a bookmarklet. And here is mine. Only one person has favourited me. I’m curious as to who this one person is, and pissed off that Technorati are using Alexa for their traffic details because it looks like I’m a Billy-No-Traffic. I’m not. My traffic may be small, but it’s perfectly formed 😛
Ofcom are rethinking their ban on the iTrip. I must admit to the fact I have one of these gadgets, received as a gift from a parental unit so I could use the iPod in a car that had no tape deck for a converter. Problem is, the frequency it is tuned to, whilst empty in the States, is slap bang in the middle of the frequency used by Radio 2 in this country, so I’ve never used the gadget in question! Would be nice if we Brit’s could get iTrips of our very own to use.
A while back Darren talked about the cost of comment spam and mentioned that certain high profile blogs were just letting it through. I couldn’t believe that anyone would do that, till I stumbled across one such blog in the course of chasing down links this week. I was going to name and shame, but then I remembered that I’m meant to be nice, so I won’t. I will say, however, that it’s reaffirmed in my mind my distaste for this blogger and made his/her reputation even lower in my eyes. There is no excuse given the great tools available. Then again, I now know where to go if I ever want a dodgy GSM phone…
Continuing my quest to make you all use coComment, there’s new widget in town that makes displaying of your latest coComments even easier. I like the simple list of names (last time I tried the ‘blog box’ of comments it took too long to load), but just because it ain’t for me doesn’t mean you won’ t like this 🙂
I’d thought I’d out grown migraines (or knew all my triggers and avoided them like the plague), but since three migraines in the past few months could indicate I haven’t, it makes me all kind of glad that UK pharmacies can now sell a migraine drug that actually works.
And lastly, finding out that people are stealing/republishing your content is generally annoying, but when a post about submitting to a blog network gets republished on a site about dating in Spain, there really is nothing to do but laugh. A lot.
How do you find these infidels who steal your content? Do they email you, with a cackle?
By being remarkably… vain… and seeing who is linking to me in assorted search engines, and in my referrer stats.
These particular infidels were silly enough to get caught by Technorati, so their evilness is there for all to see.
Excellent!