Okay, my website’ll be going down again. I’m not entirely sure for how long, though.

Just bought webhosting with DreamHost to expand horisons and do some work with a friend of mine, which I’ll no doubt be blogging about. Thought I might as well keep everything together, so I’ll move this over to my DreamHost account.

Hopefully everything will go smoothly.

… Batch files aren’t.

I have been working on a batch file at work recently. Its job is to take a named .csv file and either rename it and upload it, or upload and rename it. The main body of the file looks like this:

for /f “tokens=1-4 delims=/ ” %%a in (‘date /t’) do (set weekday=%%a& set day=%%b& set month=%%c& set year=%%d)
set jdate=%day%%month%%year%
ren two.csv PLU_%jdate%.csv

However, there is a little more that is being pulled from a couple of files.

All of that code, with practically illegible characters, is simply to rename a file to the current date. However, my problem lies with the fact that if I rename the file locally then I can’t use the batch file to select the renamed file and upload it via FTP, and if I use the batch file to upload the file via FTP first, renaming it just renames the file to %jdate%.csv.

Hopefully I’ll get this figured out sooner or later. This is definitely the most ugly bit of programming I’ve seen and partaken in working on for a long, long time.

I’ve seen the word “passport” so many times now that it is beginning to look stupid.

After countless visits to the Post Office, 3 check-throughs (only one of which they charged me for), my passport application has now been completed and sent off. Hopefully to return in 3-6 weeks. The person who checked through it this time was quite a laid-back man in his 50s. He spoke as if he’d done too many drugs in the past, and he had an odd twinkle in his eyes. He was smiling, too. He spoke to me when he was checking everything, and was a really nice guy. Quite the opposite to the snotty, tight-fisted, stuck up, pessamistic bitch that looked through it last time, who was negative about everything: “It will take 6 weeks”.

So, once the guy checked it through and confirmed that everything was okay. He asked me if I wanted to insure the additional documents (the passport and birth certificates) for an extra £3, so I agreed. We spoke about how crazily expensive it is to get a passport, how much work goes into it and how poorly documented it is. He then told me that everything looks fine, and whilst you can’t fast-track it (contrary to what the website says) it will return in 3 to 6 weeks, and if they need any extra information they will contact me. So the worst that can happen is that they telephone/email for some additional information.

I was so happy when I handed over the £80 and got £4 change that I nearly kissed him. I grinned, said “Excellent. Thanks a lot” and left the Post Office like some giggling freak. I doubt anyone has ever seen someone look so ecstatic after leaving the Post Office.

THANK YOU MR. POST OFFICE MAN!

I’ve always been fascinated by language. I love vocabulary and the way that correctly-used words scintillate when you’re reading. I love it when justified text aligns properly in neat blocks. I love paragraphs filled with words that roll off of the tongue and give the sense that the writer has such an in-depth image of something, and they can describe it with words that you somehow never manage to get into your own writing.

What really gets to me is recently I’ve realised that my writing ability isn’t anywhere near as good as I thought it was, or it used to be. My spelling has gotten a lot worse, and I constantly find myself making spelling errors (not just typos). I think my use of punctuation in the right places is to standards, although I often get confused with apostrophes. However, I simply just don’t have that ability that some people have where they can just fill a page with text which causes the reader to become consumed in fascination. I’m wondering if that’s a talent, or just something you learn.

Recently I’ve been reading through some of Meeka’s school work, because she has a lot of exams coming up that she needs to revise, and some of the things she has written are truly amazing (almost as amazing as she is). I just read through an essay she wrote which analysed the novel “How Many Miles to Babylon”, and some of the sentence syntax is awesome. I’m actually quite jealous.

“Set in the First World War, this tragedy has consistently melancholic and reflective tones, and concludes with an appropriate pessimistic, morose ending.”

“The story is particularly engaging, as it is written in the first person. We are allowed an insight into the central protagonist Alec’s thoughts, which more often than not are quite distant and unfeeling…”

Those two sentences just radiate that sort of linguistical orgasm feeling you get when you read a sentence that comprises of words that flow perfectly.

The only thing I’ve written recently that I can read over and be impressed with was in a review. Annoyingly the majority of people who have read it just find it confusing, but I like it.

“A lot of games now boast 8x anisotropic filtering, along with various other effects with complicated names; however, how many games can handle those graphical superfluities which constitute the pleasing aesthetics that shimmer across the screen in vast quantities?”

Oh teach me wise leaders of the eloquent art.

No, not, as you might think, the back pocket on your jeans. A huge back pocket.

I was heading into town today, and I had the forms for my passport (in their envelope). It was really nice and sunny today, so I wasn’t wearing a coat or anything, however it occured to me that if it rained, the forms could easily get wet. I then had this idea, which isn’t very summer-friendly, but I liked it.

I always find bags really annoying to carry when I just want to carry a book or two, or a few letters, when I can’t fit them in my pockets, but I don’t want to hold them in my hands. So how about having a jumper/coat with a big zip up pocket across the back, which is waterproof for obvious reasons. You could put a book or two in it, or generally anything that wasn’t too fat, but could be carried around in that fashion. Of course carrying something like an A4 folder would be unfomfortable if you were to sit down, but it could easily be taken off or taken out.

I thought t’was a good idea!

On the third passport form now. And the third time that something has been done wrong. This time they tell me that some dates have to be the same, and one date can’t be later than another date. Which all in all, is fair enough. However, had this been documented somewhere then the mistake wouldn’t have been made. Now I have to go back and get the signature from the person countersigning my passport. Then I have to wait until Saturday and put up with crowds and crowds of fucking pathetic people in town, bumbling around because they don’t have anything better to do. Then someone else at the Post Office will tell me that something else is wrong, and I’ll have to do something else.

They also told me that it can take up to, and usually does take, 6 weeks for a passport to be returned, and that’s if they don’t need any other information. All of this bullshit should just be done electronically, they should send you the form, you sign it, send it back and everything is done. It’s almost as if the government don’t want people leaving the country, which wouldn’t surprise me. Well, so much for getting to go to Ireland in June. Maybe if the passport regulations weren’t written by a complete and utter CUNT, it’d be half done by now, and I’d actually be looking forwards to going.

Now everything is just as unclear as it was two months ago, and it’s pissing me off so much.

The people who work at the central Post Office in Exeter are fucking stupid, though. Twice I’ve been in there with my passport forms. They ask me if I want to use their checking service, which costs an additional £7. Both times I have said yes, and both times they have verified that I need to make some changes. However, neither time have they charged me £7 for checking my passport. Stupid people.

I asked if I could fast track my passport. When I first picked up the forms a month or so ago, the woman gave them to me and said “If you post them with us and pay £10 we can fast track your application so that you get a faster return time”. I look on the Passport website (because the fees aren’t even specified in the documents sent with the passport) – click the image on the right to see the information I saw. However, when I asked at the central Post Office today, the woman said that because it’s my first passport I can’t do that. So, who do you believe? Is the turnaround 3 weeks or 6 weeks? Can you or can you not fast track it? Man, this system is so fucking terrible.

There are now three organisations which are on my “I wish you would just fucking die” list. There was one this morning; Tiscali. Now there’s the British Post Office and the Identity & Passport Service. I seriousy hope that all three businesses are ended in the most malicious, prejudice, painful, messy and torturing way possible. I know it’s not the fault of the staff that I can’t get a passport, a decent internet connection or a service at my local Post Office. Actually, it probably is. Either way, I don’t care. Burn them all, just for the sake of a period of time where I can have an evil grin on my face because other people have suffered.

I know I’m evil.

I was tempted to contact Tony Blair about the whole thing, but he doesn’t reply to e-mails, and he can burn if he thinks that I’m going to pick up a pen on his account.

Ah well, and people wonder why I don’t smile often. Maybe if things like this didn’t happen there’d be something to smile about. England sucks.

I’ve never much used Google Calendar, simply because it’s a lot of effort to get there, and I like events to be right infront of me without having to remember to look for them. I don’t have lots to put in a calendar, so it hasn’t yet become a routine thing.

Recently I’ve had to embed the Google Calendar in various places for different people, so I’ve gained a bit more experience in testing it, and knowing its capabilities. In fact, just the other day when I was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist, watching the receptionist flick through all of these books to see each dentist’s appointments and availability, I thought to myself “If Google Calendar was downloadable as a standalone application (so you didn’t have to rely on an internet connection or the Google servers to be running), this dentist could be FAR more organised, and save so much more time. I could even making some money setting it up for them, and showing them how to use it…”

Thinking about it, though. Google Calendar would be absolutely awesome for all people like that. It’s so simple and easy to use, and very quick to administrate. And the way you can create new calendars, sort through them, colour them, hide them, search them and view them differently makes it such an awesome free piece of software.

Anyway. I went into looking at how to embed it on my homepage. I looked at a few plugins for the Google Personalised Home which stated they display your calendar when you’ve changed some settings, but none of them worked very well or looked very nice, including Google’s very own. I then went down the path of looking for an HTML box plugin I could put on my homepage, so that I could embed it the way I’ve done for other people; by using an iFrame. Unfortunately one of those didn’t exist. I returned to the Google one and eventually got it to work. So now on my homepage, in between my email, today’s quotes, word of the day and latest updates from The Register, I have my calendar looking like this:

Anywho. To get your calendar to work like mine (as far as I can remember), first put the calendar on your personalised home. You can do this by clicking “Add Stuff” on your homepage and then searching for calendar. You’ll see the Google one. Once it is on your homepage, go to your Google calendar via your email inbox, or whatever. Once there click “Manage Calendars” at the bottom of the left menu. Click on the calendar you want to display (the plugin has the option to display events from more than one calendar, so you can come back and repeat this upto 5 times). Make sure the calendar you’re displaying with the plugin is shared (there is a link to change the shared settings next to the calendar). Once the calendar details page has loaded click the XML button in the Calendar Address section. Copy the link that pops up in the box. Head back to your Google homepage and click the arrow in the heading of the Google Calendar plugin, hit edit settings after that. You can change the settings as to whether you want the calendar/agenda/both displayed. You can also change the week start and time format, etc. Paste the link you copied into “Calender 1 URL” and press save. Repeat this for any other calendars.

An interesting error I did find when I was embedding calendars into standard HTML pages was that if the calendar’s email address was @googlemail.com instead of @gmail.com, it would return “Invalid calendar ID”. So if you do get this error, or if it just doesn’t display a calendar, try changing the URL from

http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/YOUREMAIL%40googlemail.com/public/basic

to

http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/YOUREMAIL%40gmail.com/public/basic

(You’ll notice I changed googlemail to gmail).

On a completely different note, I notice that WordPress have released version 2.2. This allows you to import your new Blogger account, if you have one, amongst other things. I’m not going to update just yet though, as it could cause some errors with the current plugins running on this blog.

Recently I’ve been going through the process of filling in an application form to get a passport. I was previously on my Mum’s, a few years ago, but haven’t needed a passport since. I need one now to visit Meeka in Ireland, and generally to prove that I am 18. Unfortunately, the damn English government clearly don’t want British citizens leaving the country. The English passport is one of the most expensive passports to get in the world, coming in at £66 (before any other fees such as the checking service, fast tracking, etc.). The price of it has actually increased by 57% over the past three years “to fund new high-security”, or some bullshit like that.

Anyway, after going to the dentist today, I went to the post office to send my passport off (which I had signed and everything). The man checked through it (and marvelled at my strange faces because I couldn’t feel the left side of my mouth, which is a somewhat perculiar sensation), and basically said that my Mum’s passport which I had included (which the passport form said to do because I was on that passport) was “untaxed” and therefore I shouldn’t send it off. He also said that I needed to fill in my parents’ details and include my long birth certificate.

Y’know, if they just got someone like myself to write out some simple instructions for how to fill in a passport, then it’d be so much easier for other people who are being abused by this system to get them. It is far too complicated, and the forms which give you information are far from legible. Maybe if I do it I’ll get a lot more traffic and get a lot more readers on my blog…

So, basically, I’m going to have to get in contact with the passport.gov.uk support line and ask them what I actually do need to fill in, and what I don’t. Then I’ll fill in what I need to fill in, or pick up another passport form on Friday when I go to the dentist again, and hopefully get it all right this time. This year would be so ruined, really, if I didn’t get my passport and didn’t get to go to Ireland soon.

I’ll feel so much more at ease once I have it, and it’s sitting on my desk, nice and safe.

Okay. I’ve added a plugin which allows you to be notified of comments on a post you comment on. If you don’t want to recieve notifcation either uncheck the box or don’t enter your email address. Personally I quite like being notified when a post I commened on has a new comment on it, hence installing it and turning it on for all commenters by default.

Decided I didn’t like that last one, and wanted to try something different, so I’ve gone for a completely different one. This one is quite Mac inspired, but like Macs, it is very aesthetically sweet. The menus can be dragged and dropped, which is just showing off, really.

Kudos go to the developer of this theme, a link to whom can be found at the bottom. Let me know what you think.