Skeater's Blog

Me and Holly are getting married. It's wonderful init. After the lovely ceremony, once we've all stuffed ourselves with food-a-plenty and had a laugh at all the speeches, we're going to have a party in the evening, as one might expect.

We'd like everyone to contribute some song ideas to add to the evening playlist, so please leave a comment here so I can consider it and then add it to the list!

We're thinking we might split the music up into sort of sections, like 8pm onwards is "something for everyone", 10pm onwards is "something for everyone still going" and then later in the evening "something for those that want to play air guitar with their ties tied around their heads"... well, that's how I see it anyway.

There will be no "The Proclaimers", no "Paul Simon", and no "Simon and Garfunkel."

Here's the list as it stands at the moment. This isn't the precise order of play, just a sort of grouping (19th May 2012):

• Something for everyone
  • Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love
  • Bruno Mars: Marry You
  • Dire Straits: Money For Nothing
  • Supertramp: Breakfast In America
  • Grease Megamix
  • Toploader: Dancing In The Moonlight
  • Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
  • UB40: Every Breath You Take
  • Dire Straits: Walk Of Life
  • Scissors Sisters: Comfortably Numb
• Something for everyone still going
  • Fun: We Are Young
  • Rizzle Kicks: When I Was A Youngster
  • Europe: Final Countdown
  • Survivor: Eye Of The Tiger
  • Some peoples singaling: Baywatch Theme
  • The Darkness: I Believe In A Thing Called Love
  • Paramore: Brick By Boring Brick
  • Blink 182: What's my age again?
• Surely this is just noise?
  • Tenacious D: Tribute
  • Foo Fighters: Rope
  • The Offspring: Want You Bad
  • Foo Fighters: Everlong

This entry was posted on May 19, 2012 at 7:11 PM and has received 61 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I'm running the 10k on the 20th May, I think that's 2 weeks tomorrow. I've managed 3k so far... hmmm, not sure if I'll make it.

But if I don't, never mind, I'm really just using it to get me off my arse and training for the half marathon in September, which is 21k and the whole Carmen Data Ltd office is running it, except Xavi, but because he has a dodgy knee, not because he's lazy or anything like that. Anyway my money's on Tom, he ran about 20k in 1 hour 25 mins the other day.

So I'm trying to do a bit more running at the moment, and it feels pretty good even if I am not quite hitting my targets.

Coupled with that, Holly has given up Dairy and Alcohol during her final exams. So she's got about 3 more weeks of that to go, and she's been doing it for about 2 weeks already. I'm trying to join her, but I'm not as strict as her.

I've stopped eating butter, cheese and chocolate and I've stopped drinking milk. Neither of us are being 100% strict, Holly has had a Pizza and one Ice Cream, and a white tea in about 2 weeks. I've had 3 choc chip digestives, a milky tea and coffee, 2 Ice cream sundaes, shared that aforementioned Pizza with Holly, I think Matt Leach put butter in my bacon sandwich. So I'm not as strict as Holly... I've also drunk maybe 3 or 4 beers in that time. Holly hasn't had any at all.

However, for me I'm actually pretty much fasting... I live on milk, cheese and chocolate... and red meat. The cheese and milk I can cope without. Red meat I still have plenty of.

But chocolate... I miss chocolate so much... a few choc chip digestive haven't satisfied me at all. I want a big fucking slab of chocolate and I want to eat it, I want to eat it so bad. No stupid bits of biscuit and other nonsense, just plain old chocolate all over my face.

And beer... I've had a few beers at the pub, not really many, not compared to usual. But I want to drink beer at home... I like a beer or 2 when I'm writing code! A couple (or 8) coffees to get me started, then a couple of beers to wind down in the evening, then another 2 coffees to keep me going till 2am, then collapse in bed having written some excellent code, and probably done some tweeting.

So basically, this health drive thing I'm on does make me feel physically better, I might keep away from cheese and milk... but I seriously want some chocolate, and I want my beer back.

This entry was posted on May 5, 2012 at 10:55 PM and has received 45 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

A lot of people and websites seem to think Alexa web site stats are in some way useful. They have got slightly less crap over the years, but they still suck.

Originally I think Alexa stats were only gathered by installing a toolbar in IE and browsing the web. So the stats on Alexa were basically just telling you how your site compares in relation to traffic of people using IE, which is bad enough, that have also been silly enough to install a stat gathering tool bar, which is even worse.

I think now you can install the toolbar in Firefox, possibly Chrome or Safari as well, but the point being Alexa gathers stats from people who have installed the toolbar!

But hardly anyone I know uses the Alexa toolbar, most people I know avoid installing toolbars like the plague, which they should.

So Alexa stats can't be accurate or useful. And they're not.

I found another reason why Alexa is bloody stupid today. I looked at my site there, and I was told I had 4 inbound links to my website. Inbound links are what boost your Google ranking - other search engines are available, but they're rubbish, and most of them literally copy Google anyway.

The 4 inbound links I had, were 2 comments on a single post at Ray Camden's blog, which link back to my blog, and 2 more comments on 2 other blogs linking back to my site.

So 1st of all, I had 2 links on the same page linking to my site, which I'm pretty sure only really counts as one. And secondly, there are many, many more links to my website all over the world.

Twitter, Facebook, Stackoverflow, Luuux as well as all the other blog's in the world I've posted on that use Gravatar. Basically, Alexa stats are incomplete, stupid, inaccurate.

If someone quotes Alexa stats at you, either they don't know what they're talking about, or they're trying to bullshit you with fake stats.

This entry was posted on May 5, 2012 at 11:32 AM and has received 49 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

First of all, I've not posted in a month. There's been a variety of reasons for this, such as me forgetting my password so I couldn't blog at work, me being very busy at Comcar, Willshaw Media, Skeater Media and at home, and some other stuff to.

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway here's something interesting...

I was trying to show super sci-fi movie pro Tom Riley something or other on the 'ole blog here, and I typed in the URL wrong.

Big deal. Who cares. I get an error message to my email account, life goes on.

WHEN SUDDENLY!!! Within 5 minutes I got another error email. Someone else had visited this incorrect made up page...

Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!

Who be following me around the web then? If I visit a page on my blog that doesn't exist, there's surely no links to it. Surely not! I should know after all, I host the dang thing. So how did someone else get to the page?!

So I checked the second email message, and it was my old enemy, Google Bot. Why did Google Bot follow me to a page that doesn't exist on my site.

If Google Bot existed in the physical world, it would probably follow me like this

Because Google Bot is an addict. An addict for indexing. And I use Google Chrome, who clearly passes all your information straight to Google Bot.

I've suspected this for many a year, and been fairly certain of it, but that pretty much cements my theory.

If you use chrome, and type in a URL, Google Bot will rush over their to check that shit out, like an excited Labrador chasing a shiny ball that's caught it's eye.

So will I keep using Chrome? Fuck yeah! Chrome is awesome, and I'd be naive, stupid and idiotic to think that Chrome is the only thing that sells on my data.

I complained to Co-op or Iceland in the same week a while back... ever since then I get about 5 porn emails to my Hotmail account. Is that their way of getting back at me for whinging?

So in summary, if you are a live today, you are constantly be tracked and followed all the time. If you use the internet, you make it about 345,454,671,234.67 times easier for someone to follow you.

This entry was posted on May 4, 2012 at 3:41 PM and has received 53 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

For far too long I've been using Bubble sorts, they're very basic and very slow but mainly I've been sorting tiny little arrays or lists and the server just don't care about it.

But that's not the proper way of doing things. Now I don't really understand sorting algorithms all that much so I use this site to work out which one I want to use, plus a little bit of wiki:

Sorting-algorithms.com

I've decided to use merge sort from now on mainly because it's quite fast and although it generally seems to be a tiny bit slower than a shell or heap sort, it is stable which shell and heap are not. I don't really know what that means but it sounds safe! Also it works much better on large sets than any of the simple algorithms.

The algorithm is more complex than a Bubble sort and although I understand the gist of it I decided to find someone elses code and use that. So I did.

Simon Horwith's blog entry on search algorithms

This guy has made a fantastic little demo app, very comprehensive, with 6 different sortin algorithms in it. You can download the zip and drop it into a server and test the speeds of each algorithm. Then the code is there for you to play with, or as Simon put it: I look forward to hearing how people put them to use as well as any other findings with them.

I've tweaked his code a bit, so it will take an array of structures/objects, and sort by any publically accessible field of the that structure. Here's how I've used it in the test page:

You can view the live demo of it working here http://skeater.co.uk/samples/mergesort.cfm and I've also attached a .zip of the .cfm and .cfc.

Thanks to Simon Horwith, and hopefully someone else will find this useful!

This entry was posted on April 4, 2012 at 12:42 PM and has received 55 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

In the past I've had problems with my blog working on mobiles. Something to do with the way it's set up for Coldfusion but I'm running Railo.

I blogged about it here: My very few BlogCFC woes

So when I switched across to my new server recently, I forgot to make the changes to get it running on my new server. I have in fact done something slightly differently this time though, I've changed the /railo/tomcat/conf/web.xml file instead of the one in the instance of Skeater.co.uk, so the changes are global.

Note: once again, the white space between the slash, /, and the star, *, is just to stop the blog trying to use it as a comment.

So thanks Sparky for pointing out the error, and no thanks to you Pete, for being an idiot and not correcting the problem that you've had before so you should have known! Dumb ass.

This entry was posted on April 2, 2012 at 6:53 PM and has received 70 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

As some of you may know I've recently had a slightly less than positive food produce related issue with the co-op. I basically had 2 skanky looking packets of ham, and it's taking far too long to get my money back, I've had to give them codes and addresses and nonsense.

So today when I picked up the second half of my Waitrose Good To Go BLT, I was very unhappy to find out someone had already taken a bite out of it...

Even if co-op hadn't recently packaged sliced crap and labelled it "truly irresistible", I would have been unhappy with this incomplete BLT. So I took the slightly less than half sandwich into Waitrose, went up to the customer service desk, showed the lady behind the desk, she said:

"Oh that's not very nice, do you want to go and get another one while I do a refund for you"

So I said "Thanks", picked up another BLT, went back to the desk, she scanned it then gave me the sandwich, a receipt, £2.50 and said

"Sorry for the inconvenience".

Now that's customer service. Do you think Waitrose were better because I went there in person? Or do you think they just gave me the money no questions asked becuase they're a better shop? Tesco have done that for me in the past actually, I emailed and ask for £6.50, they transferred it to me and said sorry as well.

By the way I didn't just ask Tesco for the money, it was because they'd given me too much food which I didn't ask for in an online delivery. So they gave me back the money... but they didn't bother coming to collect their baked beans and leeks.

So anyway, I love Waitrose, even though my sandwich had a bite out of it before I'd even opened the packet... and I still hate Co-op.

In the end I got 1.5 sandwiches and 2.5 pounds!

This entry was posted on April 2, 2012 at 3:13 PM and has received 93 views. There are currently 2 comments. Print this entry.

I seriously hate The Co-operative food stores. I live in Bristol, BS9, there are 3 co-op stores within a 20 minute walk of me.

The worst store is 5 minutes away, the next worst store is 10 minutes away, the least worst is 20 minutes away. But they're all totally shite.

If I want groceries like last minute bread or milk, a bit of my soul dies. I didn't really have much choice before, if I realised Issy didn't have any milk for bed time, if it was a week day I could get 4 pints and be back home in 15 minutes if I used the store 5 minutes away. It has rubbish opening hours for the weekend, so on a Sunday it's a 30 minute round trip.

The problem is on foot I've no choice but to go to these very badly run, managed and stocked "shops". Other than the co-op I'd have to take a 25 minute hike up Parry's lane to get to Waitrose.

Now I have a car again, I will kill trees in order to avoid the co-op. I am much happier paying a few pence to drive to Sainsbury's, Tesco or Waitrose, in my un-economical car than to go to the co-op.

Here is a list of why the co-op is so bad:

• The tills in EVERY store I've been to have been badly laid out and awkwardly placed
• A large percentage of the staff seem to be lazy, unfriendly and stupid
• One of the co-op checkout ladies in the Sea Mills branch was doing shopping after she finished her shift, and she queue jumped in front of me with a massive basket of crap, when I only had a loaf of bread and milk to buy. If queue jumping wasn't enough... SHE BLOODY WORKED AT THE STORE!
• Their food quite often contains random stuff that shouldn't be in there... seriously, lot's of gristle, chewy bits... nasty stuff
• When Holly worked there (she isn't lazy, unfriendly or stupid by the way) they asked her EVERY week to work shifts she told them in the interview she COULD NOT WORK. HOW STUPID ARE THE MANAGERS!
• Holly's first (and only, she quit) pay cheque was a totally random amount... more than her basic hours, less than her total including overtime... it made NO SENSE AT ALL!

So anyway some people might blather on about it being fair trade and all but it's not... fair trade means FAIR, as in balanced, even, positive for all parties involved.

The co-op food store may pay nice prices to the suppliers, but they then rip off the customer! Co-op prices are stupidly, incorrectly overpriced and the products are poor quality. And the service is SHITE! TOTAL UTTER SHITE PANTS!

So, as usual, because of where I live, the only open shop nearby was The crap-op (did you see what I did there :D). So I went there, and thought to myself "I've been paid this week, and the food here is shit. So I'll buy their more expensive ham, to make up for their awful quality."

I got home, started making my sandwiches for work tomorrow, and opened the first packet of ham that I bought. This is the 25th March, the sell by date on the ham is the 30th. It looks like a Yin and Yang symbol:

The first picture shows the nice pink meat, visible through the clear panel. The second shot reveals the horrible bruised yellow dry looking meat that was hidden beneath the packaging. So I sighed to myself, threw the packet to the side and opened the second pack with a use by date of the 5th of april.

This stuff looks like spam crossed with a placenta, and a massive lump of snot in the middle. It's totally disgusting NOT truly irresistable. It really is the opposite of irresistable. I not only "resisted" it, I was repulsed by it and thus rejected it.

So, I'm complaining to co-op, I do hope to get my £4.50 back, and I will be driving further afield to visit Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose or maybe even ASDA.

I, really do hate, The Co-operative Food.

This entry was posted on March 25, 2012 at 9:47 PM and has received 115 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

It's about time I had an excellent dream again, well I have them every day but they're getting harder to remember.

This one happened a couple of days ago, but here we go...

It was late at night, I was running through the panicked streets of a generic city center, I was with Holly, and possibly some extras as well. There were zombie hordes chasing many panicked people around. I was doing some awesome Taekwondo moves on them, and we were running through the crowds.

We rounded a corner and saw a large horde of Zombies at the end of the road, I spotted a conveniently parked and easy to hot wire BMW E46 330i coupe. Me and Holly jumped in, and I started driving through the Zombies, it was actually rather calm now. We locked the doors and the Zombies just moved out the way as I drove slowly to safety.

The next thing I remember is being on a forested hill side, up away from the Zombie infested city. I was on my own now, doing some awesome ninja stealth moves to creep through the trees and avoid the Zombies that seemed to have set up a camp in the forest.

I was trying to get to a derailed train in a valley on the other side of the hill. The train was very derailed, there were no rails involved in the scene at all. I got to the train, and Holly was there, as well as some posh people, and they were all being held hostage. I spotted one of the captors planting a bomb in the toilet on the derailed train, HE WAS GOING TO BLOW US ALL UP!

The next part of the dream I was up on the other side of the valley with the derailed train at the base, about to explode. It was sitting behind a stone wall, above the entrance to a small cave. The train exploded, but it's ok, it was like a simulation. No one was hurt. The rest of the hostages were with me, and I explained my new plan to them.

We were back on the train again, and I snuck to the loo, flirting my way past a female captor. I pretended to use the loo, but I was really placing the explosive device in my inside pocket... despite wearing a hoody.

Moments later, we were back up the hillside sitting behind the stone wall, and I'd placed the bomb inside the small cave beneath us. Soon, the bomb would explode, but be contained inside the cave. Our captors would think us destroyed, and we'd rush down the hill and kick them all in the face!

The bomb exploded, fire flooded down the hill and wrapped around the train, and then I woke up.

Good times.

This entry was posted on March 22, 2012 at 2:58 PM and has received 73 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

On my 20 minute walk home from work, I usually do one of 3 things with my brain to keep myself entertained.

One of them, is to design my fantasy island with a massive mansion, a race track, an air strip, recording studios, and a large staff of attractive female celebrities, to load my dishwasher, mow my many lawns and polish my many cars. There would be rooms in all of the wings for all my friends and family, probably an oversized "soft play" for adults, a paintball arena, rally track, football pitch... that kind of thing.

Something else I do is try to solve logic problems I've got with code/applications, something about being a way from a desk and detaching myself from the problem usually fixes it.

If I'm not doing one of the other, chances are I'm coming up with another project for me to probably never finish. Here's a current list of things I've started and not finished...

• 5quared.com - a review site, for reviewing everything, tied to...
• HowItHandles.com, a review site for cars, with an excellent twist, tied to...
• Online Motor Musuem... a musuem for every car ever, with varying levels of interactivity for the free, paying and premium musuem goer
• HolGood.com - a website to help you say thanks to anonymous people who've helped you in life
• Teaboi - a tea break timer
• The Swarm Trilogy + other short stories
  • Swarm
  • Tolerance
  • Captains
  • 8 short stories
• Cruise - a story about sinking cruise ships
• Closure - a story about the end of the universe, matter and stuff like that
• SkyGate - an animated series about a futuristic toll road (exciting stuff ay!)
• KungDo - a kung fo themed to-do list app
• IE Sicks - a website about how shit Internet Explorer is
• PratNav - a comedy sat-nav site
• InMyWin - site listing useful free windows apps
• Chair made out of CDs (Jason Yeo's idea... I bet he hasn't done it yet either!)
• Build and race a rally car - fairly self explanatory
• Kuko's welcome back to the UK present
• Get a black belt in a martial art

That's everything I can think of at the moment... there's probably more.

Anyway, I think the reasons I don't do this (and they are all very very good reasons) are that I have to do all my own washing, tidying, cleaning, food shopping, I have a lovely fiance and daughter to play with, I have 2 jobs, I'm addicted to films and video games, I go to taekwondo a couple of times a week, and I get easily distracted by household DIY...

I do get through things slowly... but certainly not at the rate that I come up with ideas. So basically, if anyone wants to do some of this stuff for me, I'll pay them a tiny percentage of the inevitable millions I'll make from it all.

Also using the toilet is annoying, I have to go pee now. What a waste of time...

This entry was posted on March 20, 2012 at 5:57 PM and has received 102 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry.