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Some of you may remember my initial Plea for Spelling, in which I bemoaned the tendency of people these days to spell “ridiculous” as “rediculous”. Well, I have another plea. On the front of a computer equipment catalogue, I saw an advert for a printer. It had on the front: “The perfect compliment to any office”.

It just filled my mind with images of a printer sitting there in an office, occasionally printing out messages such as “Oh this is such a lovely office” and “Your office is beautiful dah-ling”.

What they possibly might have meant a printer that complemented the office. Ok, so you might think I’m being all smart-alec about it, but — I’ve just noticed (again) recently a downward spiral in people’s attitudes towards communication. In a lot of the communication I receive at work (through e-mail or our support site etc), people don’t actually bother to use proper capitalisation / grammar / any logic at all in the message whatsoever (delete as appropriate, except in a few rare cases where deleting none is the only option). The whole point of “communication” is that the person you’re communicating to can comprehend what you’re communicating (just to get the word in this sentence for a fourth time, I’ll say “communicate” again).

Aaaannd… in other news, nuclear power stations are safe from terrorist attack. Well, they are in America, at least. That’s good news for those of us who live near a nuclear power station (I used to live quite near to Sizewell B).

Finally, if Jesus had an iPod he would be listening to Christian Rock. My favourite quote from the article is this: “Jesus’ Podcast on the iMount would indeed be an improvement on the traditional method of spreading the word.” I’m not sure I entirely agree, but I found the idea of Jesus podcasting on the iMount to be very entertaining!

That’s all today, you may now resume normal life (those of you whose lives can be said to be ‘normal’, which if I know my readership is very few of you!).

… was the question on my mind a couple of weeks ago, over Christmas. I was talking to Philippa and her parents, and we were wondering how TV stations managed to calculate their viewing figures – whether it was done automatically, or whether they had some form of survey, or something like that.

Well, I just decided to Google it, and came up with this article from the Guardian. Apparently, viewing figures are calculated by giving a number of people a special piece of equipment which allows them to specify when they’re watching TV and what they are watching. This information is then collected by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board Ltd (BARB).

You can find out more info on the BARB Website, if you so wish!

Yay! My electronic piano has arrived and is set up! I went over to my parents’ house last night to pick it up. First things first, here’s a picture:

[cpg_imagethumb:3,Digital Piano.jpg]

I’m actually very pleased with it. The keys feel properly weighted, i.e. when you play it feels like you’re playing a real piano. The sound was a bit disappointing at first, mainly because the keys felt so realistic I was expecting the sound of a real piano! But having played it now and got used to it, I’m actually very happy. The sound isn’t as full as you would get if you paid for a more expensive model, but it’s definitely not half bad for the price. Also, I think half the problem comes from the speakers, which seem to be a bit tinny… if I were to purchase some better speakers, I think it might sound better.

So there you go! That’s all from me for now…

I’ve just read Joe’s latest blog entry, entitled “For the Dictionary People”. He’s made up a list of words that should go in the dictionary, including treasures like “Dooblesplong” and my personal favourite, “Meeblewump” (just rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?).

What I love about the English Language is that is that you can almost guarantee there are going to be some stupid words in there already, though. The current Word of the Day on Dictionary.com is “sesquipedalian”. I thought the definition was quite appropriate:

sesquipedalian \ses-kwuh-puh-DAYL-yuhn\, adjective:
1. Given to or characterized by the use of long words.
2. Long and ponderous; having many syllables.

So there you have it, Joe, you sesquipedalian person, you…

I’ve just been reading the Cloud Appreciation Society website forums. Apparently there is someone who studies clouds and their use in predicting earthquakes: Earthquake Clouds. This is interesting stuff – a lot of the predictions have been quite accurate! And it certainly seems to hold up scientifically.

In other news, I have received word that my digital piano is in stock and will be sent today, so hopefully it will arrive tomorrow! All things being well, expect a review and some pics in the next couple of days 🙂

I’ve just found an interesting website — the Cloud Appreciation Society! Trust me, it’s well worth having a look. Here’s a couple of quotes from the ‘about’ section of their website:

At The Cloud Appreciation Society we believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them

We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wheresoever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at monotonous blue every day. The clouds are Nature’s poetry – sometimes spoken in a whisper, sometimes roared with all her might

And… that’s it.

In other lack of news, I have done nothing interesting over the past couple of days. So there you go.

I’m afraid I don’t have anything particularly exciting to say about this weekend (no change there then…) On Friday I went into work as normal, but I started feeling progressively worse throughout the day. For a while I actually thought I’d got flu! I went home at normal time, but quite how I managed to get back without hitting anything on the journey I don’t know… I think God must have been looking out for me! Anyway.

I did feel much better by the time Saturday came around, but I didn’t really do much for the whole day! In the evening I watched “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, which I’d bought on DVD over Christmas. It’s a very enjoyable film – I think they managed to capture Douglas Adams’ original sense of fun in the radio series / book quite well!

Yesterday I went to church in the morning with Philippa, and then afterewards went to lunch at the Harvester in Stanway as Pete & Suzi were up for the weekend! It was good to see them again, as well as Matthew, Sarah & Jon, Simon, and Kerry and her fiance.

Anyway, I think that’s just about it for the weekend. I don’t know whether I mentioned that I ordered a digital piano, but I did – a couple of weeks ago. I ordered it along with the stand… the annoying thing is, the keyboard itself is in the warehouse ready to be delivered, but the stand is taking a while to come in! It’s scheduled to arrive tomorrow, so hopefully it will arrive soon.

All for now!

This is one of the funniest things I’ve read recently: Click Here You Idiot!. I don’t really think there’s much I can say here to explain it, just read it (it’s worth it). The only other thing I can say is, there’s an article about it on The Register (which doesn’t give away much either).

Well, it turns out that WordPress v2.0 has been released! Excellent. I upgraded to it just now, it took about half an hour. You probably won’t notice much difference in general, although I do apologise if anyone finds anything on the site that’s broken because of it!

Anyway. If you’re a WordPress user — check out the Blog Post. If you’re not a WordPress user — why not? Check it out anyway! 🙂 Most of the feature improvements seem to be behind the scenes, but the new admin section looks quite snazzy! Also there seems to be the option of signing up as a subscriber to the blog, which (if I’m correct in my assumption) means you’ll be able to get my blog by e-mail. Why you’d do that I don’t know, but still…

Well, I’d better get back to writing my lovely, lovely test plan… oh what incredibly joy! *ahem* As you were…

Just a quick update to say I’m safely back home! I got back home yesterday (Saturday, it’s still yesterday as I haven’t gone to bed yet). I got a new battery for my car, as well as some new windscreen wipers. The good news is that the windscreen wipers are now fitted. The bad news is that unfortunately I couldn’t fit the battery (I needed a tool which I haven’t got), and the car won’t start now! So my Dad is coming over tomorrow to help me fix it, hopefully we’ll manage to get it going again and everything will be fine.

Anyway. Yesterday I went to the chaplaincy new year’s eve party. It was a really good time, we played some party games and generally had a laugh! This morning, not being able to get to Fordham (because of the car), Philippa and I went to St Peter’s Church down the road from me. It was very enjoyable!

After lunch we watched some episodes of Fawlty Towers (I got the box set from Philippa for Christmas), and in the evening we had a pizza and watched “Clerks” (something I picked up in the sales).

I think that just about brings you up to speed… all for the time being!