Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-20

  • @simonmhawkins your child has extra heads? #
  • @robinhouston you should see some of the personas that @torchbox has come up with in past. They had pictures and backstories and everything. #
  • @didlix during redecorating, we take UHT milk round to new house to avoid buying from Tesco's. We always say UHT stands for "U Hate Tesco's" #
  • just voted "NO" on "Do you belive that the NHS is a bad thing?" vote too ? http://bit.ly/ul8KQ #
  • @robinhouston the idea is to improve both Jeremy and Verity's lot, rather than prioritizing hard-core developers: let's call them "J-P" #
  • Photo: Half a Billy: eustatius posted a photo:

    One of our full-height Ikea Billy bookcases fell over las.. http://bit.ly/fmNMJ #

  • #R5 grudgingly implies @bloggerheads is journalism (although Tom Mangold 'breaks' story) - will Private Eye or Nick Davies be next? #
  • Wow, though, Donal's show on #r5 rather fell short over Usmanov, though, didn't it? They should've got @CraigMurrayOrg in to speak. #
  • Idea for #R5 series: hard-working blogger researches primary sources on blog; "journalist" cries "Mazel Tov," breaks a glass, blesses story. #
  • @robinhouston original post on #d7ux "personas" well worth a read regarding Jeremy's own opinion of the word "consultant"...! #
  • BE03 BFZ silver SUV overtakes on blind corner, ONCOMING TRAFFIC, panics, swerves, rocks on suspension. Who'd have guessed? #cagerfail #
  • @magicsnaps oh, I always pull over. I did wonder whether I could dictaphone them, but probably more trouble than worth wobble wobble agh..! #
  • @didlix we have a freezer, but as we're only there one day in five it isn't switched on yet. Prob from this evening, though. Carpets today! #
  • @Cheap_Gas_Bills and @CheapGasBills have both followed me in quick succession for no reason. Tweets are cheap, guys. #mocknblock #
  • @rhodri's valve has closed after the MV Dixie Queen has passed downstream. #
  • #reasonstobecheerful Bugfixing has changed over the years from a by-eye trawl through code to interesting unit-test coding in its own right. #
  • @rhodri's valve has re-opened for the SB Gladys, which is passing upstream. #
  • @rhodri gah, and there was me coding the twitterbot already. NOT ACTUALLY TRUE. #
  • @timmillwood we find spreadsheets lead to non-CCK reqs appearing in field spec e.g. workflow, perms. Better sol'n, or build-as-spec? #drupal #
  • @robertDouglass I don't think I'll forget "Nice Lobster gets unexpected Viking love" as long as I live (http://bit.ly/1iKC2l , @horncologne) #
  • Link: Why Users Dumped Your Open Source App for Proprietary Software | ITworld http://bit.ly/AX39Y #
  • "/foo/bar".split(/\//) in FF gives three elements (first blank); in IE7 it gives two. That can't be right. #javascript #
  • @robinhouston yeah, horrid: self-inconsistent too. See solution by @dracos - use non-regex or http://bit.ly/44EfH #javascript #ie #
  • @greg_harvey #ubercart panel at #drupalcon suggested that will be consistent with letter of PCI DSS but rely on company workflows for spirit #
  • Photo: New sofa, new carpet...: eustatius posted a photo:

    ... wife just as novel and lovely as ever. Phew. http://bit.ly/19qgax #

  • @greg_harvey we're moving slowly as we had to decorate new place. But that means we're sick of living in two houses. Roll on Sat. #
  • Please RT: late, invalid objection to Witney Town Green - Oxfordshire County Council is 'embarrassed' by own officers http://bit.ly/CtBPA #
  • "Creationists and #climatechange deniers have this in common: they don’t answer their critics." http://bit.ly/WEHtG , http://bit.ly/EdEac #
  • @ImLondonBridge does the rivalry between you and @towerbridge actually stem from the lovely Millau Viaduct spurning your advances for his? #
  • If someone at a company reads a complaining tweet, then searches for the tweeter's personal email and contacts them: good or bad behaviour? #
  • @didlix it's fair game, yeah. Trying to think if behaviour is good (personal treatment) or bad (poor etiquette, trying to squash criticism) #
  • @alpower true but what motivates companies (that have tried so hard to distances themselves from customer hoi polloi) to be responsive here? #
  • @alpower I think this is a switched-on individual like you and @argle have mentioned. Still fed up with the company (not BT: down, @BTcare!) #
  • Trying to compare Dyson and Miele cleaners (down, spambots); I like Dysons but they're confusing me by looking more like robots than vacs #
  • @whatishen That's terrible. Get well soon! I'd say rest up and don't train - I thought that a lot of exercise was bad for glandular fever. #
  • this unintentional lazyweb thing is great - thanks @htfb @julietk @_mmat_ @bangpound @j4 @davecranwell #
  • @maddisondavid Ha! I have turned a large region of my Twitter network middle-class and middle-aged, or at any rate exposed them as such. #
  • Link: Views 2: Basic Page View Flow | Angry Donuts: Programmatic breakdown of views http://bit.ly/HfVHz #
  • @griffinkate because you're a perfectionist and I love that. #
  • Time for some... card sorting! Who doesn't like card sorting? But who would really do it for their own site....? Pity me. #
  • @greg_harvey you can change what gets sent over with hooks. solr wants a key/value array, and apachesolr chews a node down into that. #
  • @greg_harvey in the alpha-5 we've used, hook_apachesolr_update_index(&$document, $node) #
  • RT @purserhallard: Why are absolutely all male TV chefs giant cocks? http://bit.ly/XKOfZ #cycling #cagerfail #jamesmartinisacock #
  • @greg_harvey the &$document is the key/value blob that gets sent over to Solr to decompose, passed by ref. $document['link'] ? #
  • @greg_harvey we strip text from PDFs with #Tika and append to $document->text for indexing and it works great. #apachesolr #drupal #
  • #reasonstobecheerful sharply defined problems with a range of technical solutions, some of which at least are really exciting to implement. #
  • @griffinkate go on, tell them about how the @BTcare bot rang you up with Mariella Frostrup's voice. Does she also do religious predictions? #
  • @jwebster ah, that old Inuit advice: "don't eat the yellow done-done." #
  • @griffinkate has been waiting for 4h55m for a promised BT engineer - I wonder if he'll turn up in the next five minutes. #
  • Shockingly bad behaviour from BT as @griffinkate waits FIVE HOURS for the promised engineer to not turn up. Second inconvenient lie from BT. #
  • @j4 @griffinkate the @BTCare bot has indeed tried to ping me, despite last week's #mocknblock. #
  • If BT's call centre staff and engineers were as reliable as the @BTCare bot's generic first-person tweets then we might have a line by now. #
  • Radcliffe and Maconie have been doing this radio show for, what, over two years now? And it's still wonderfully the opposite of seamless #r2 #
  • @robinhouston ding dong! #
  • Bugger. Just finished upgrading a stack of #drupal modules on a new site to find that 6.14 has just been released. I mean, er, thanks, guys! #
  • @sillage I don't generally tip deliveries of any sort: I don't know if there's logic there so much as lack of my perception of their effort. #
  • Please RT #ogn 14 in a week's time: now sponsored by @openplatform, @torchbox and @apress and @overheardatmoo. More soon http://bit.ly/oUccS #
  • Five hours of life wasted RT @griffinkate Just rang BT.... we *do* have a landline now; the "engineer" "installed" it by flicking a switch. #
  • @griffinkate good job BT's previous incompetence and lying meant they were already waiving the £100 or so fee for that 5-hour switch-flick. #
  • RT @bengoldacre: please RT to help find the cyclists injured by James Martin and ensure a prosecution http://bit.ly/3h72s3 #
  • @griffinkate, in other words, while correlation is not causation, it sure as hell is correlation, so expect it to correlate and BEWARE. #
  • @j4 I've just sent you an email, so I'm just tweeting to let you know I'll be ringing you in a sec to ask you if you've got it. #
  • @robertDouglass I'm never completely sure about private methods myself. My pythonic background suggests: let other classes call and beware! #
  • @robertDouglass had some clients really impressed with #Apache #Solr and #Drupal today. Serious props to everyone on the apachesolr project. #
  • Scott Walker's Jackie on Marc Riley's show on #6music. Always forget how differently mental each Walker song is from every other Walker song #
  • The rat control the cook! How is it possible the rat control the cook? #adambuxton http://bit.ly/SZRsX #
  • @jamieandrews let's hear it for Team Bee! @ollywillans you all OK? Bees placid? Any possibility they can be saved without the queen? #
  • @griffinkate what a lovely story #
  • @griffinkate I'm ain't hatin'. I'm just, er, contemplatin'? #
  • @garrettc screenshots of the copywriting for next S&T? (also for @kategriffin as she might be interested) #
  • (Raises hand, obv) RT @Hicksdesign: Hands up who's heading over to Oxford Geek Night next Wednesday? http://bit.ly/4cFrb #
  • @benwerd Twitter is to the traditional web what small ideas are to big ideas: building blocks, available for anyone to use. #
  • @benwerd for inspiration, @glinner wrote this, directed at commentators who don't get Twitter but won't shut up about it http://bit.ly/X5wf4 #
  • @didlix I'm not convinced OO is the way to go. If PHP did OO as well as Python... but PHP's laziness + Drupal's naming conventions suffices. #
  • @didlix OO isn't always the right, or quickest, route. Interfaces prevent things like ducktyping, and sometimes functional is the way to go. #
  • @didlix PHP objects always feel like Java objects: clunky and over-spec'd. PHP function declarations in .module files OTOH are lightweight. #
  • "Here's a Word doc: please sign and return". @davecranwell, my guess is that they don't mean with your public PGP key. #
  • @didlix deffo #
  • @andrewl if you're a PHP dev and you sit in front of a mirror and say "backslash" three times in a row then the Devil eats your namespace. #
  • If I say someone's not at their desk, then ringing someone else, to ring me, to ask me if they're at their desk, will have the same result. #
  • Link: A shorthand for designing UI flows: UI flows on the web are necessarily sketchy, as users wander off .. http://bit.ly/wz8nZ #
  • I've just fallen victim to a classic bluff: replace "I have no idea about the HTTP spec" with "there's a firefox extension you could try." #
  • Since when did refusing to answer a straight question about API syntax, but pointing people at Firefox plugin constitute a desire to engage? #
  • #reasonstobecheerful afternoon toast and tea #
  • @garrettc they aspartamed Vimto, I think: even the full-fat version. It did for it, unfortunately, although it's still better than Ribena. #
  • @griffinkate you can bypass that extra security stuff and just refuse to submit it. Questions DECREASE security: http://bit.ly/FbTLU #
  • O2 won't let you have hyphens in your first name, or punctuation in your password. I mean, what? Do they do this sort of thing on purpose? #
  • Except O2 doesn't call it punctuation: it calls it "special characters". Is that specifically to make the login less secure? Bravo! #
  • More 02 #fail: "please enter a valid security answer. An answer can be alphanumeric with no special character." Also less secure! Well done! #
  • O2 have even TEXTED me my password. Why not just email it to me too, in plain text, so it's REALLY insecure? #
  • Yet *more* O2 fail - your direct debit account name CAN'T BE TOO LONG. They truncate your name if they don't like it. #
  • Right at the very end, O2 call my current mobile an "O2 mobile". Scared that they'll try to take it over from Vodafone I START AGAIN. Jesus. #
  • Ahh, O2 won 't LET you not give them a mobile number. Good job nobody will ever want broadband if they don't have a mobile. #
  • @j4 I'm not saying your mum's an idiot, but she totally built the O2 website #
  • @j4 you see O2's red, garish error reporting which causes the form contents to spill out like spuds from a bag? That's your makeup, that is. #
  • @j4 O2 is called O2 because that's what your mother scores: "oh... two out of ten." #
  • Right. That's that barrelload of O2 #fail out of the way. No estimated arrival time but we all know how badly that went with BT. #
  • @stevejalim it might be. Before you do - just for reference - are you a good healer, or do you bruise easily? #
  • Almost everything is in boxes, and my back isn't too painful after some stretches. Ready for tomorrow's move. God, are we ready. #
  • Can't tell if insomnia is from excitement, worry or just staying up late. Regardless, it ain't going to help me drive a van. #
  • Photo: Black Squadron command: "Pan hat!": eustatius posted a photo: http://bit.ly/OoFXj #
  • Waking up for first time in our new house. Lovely it was, but a shame I now have to return the van by 8.30am. #

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