PreshBlog

Just went to the NHS Blood Donor online portal thingy, and saw the following little gem:

Um, what?

It’s not a "private network", it’s a fucking website, served up publicly. I think some stupid legalweasel^Hlawyer types must have insisted that that notice be present.

Both via theweaselking.

Hmm, Metcheck seem to think it’s going to get a little breezy next week:

Forecasting 305mph winds on Wednesday night? That would be rather far off the wrong end of the Beaufort scale, and I don’t think my fence would take kindly to that :)

Michael Jackson was a true legend, one of the best musical entertainers for a long time, and of cause his untimely demise was a big shame.

But, what’s with the number of his songs in the charts?

I don’t understand this – the real fans who will really miss him will already *have* his albums, so why are his singles now suddenly selling so much? Who are these people who presumably didn’t think much of him when he was alive, but now want to buy his music so much now he’s passed on?

Granted, it’s good to see the quality of the music in the charts inproving, but how’s this for mad (this is looking at the chart for the week of 2009-07-06):

That’s just those within the top 50 – there’s a few more between 50 and 75 too.

It’s a fitting tribute to a great entertainer, but it still puzzles me.

Ryanair passengers could soon fly for free – if they want to stand for their journey

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary told Sky News the low-cost airline was considering ripping out the back few rows of seats on some flights.

Um, what? I’m pretty sure that won’t fly.

The FAA regulations definately require suitable seats with safety belts:

Sec. 121.311 – Seats, safety belts, and shoulder harnesses.

(a) No person may operate an airplane unless there are available during the takeoff, en route flight, and landing –

(1) An approved seat or berth for each person on board the airplane who has reached his second birthday; and

(2) An approved safety belt for separate use by each person on board the airplane who has reached his second birthday, except that two persons occupying a berth may share one approved safety belt and two persons occupying a multiple lounge or divan seat may share one approved safety belt during en route flight only.

(b) Except as provided in this paragraph, each person on board an airplane operated under this part shall occupy an approved seat or berth with a separate safety belt properly secured about him or her during movement on the surface, takeoff, and landing. A safety belt provided for the occupant of a seat may not be used by more than one person who has reached his or her second birthday.

Pretty sure the CAA/JAA will have similar rules.

My first instinct was to check whether this story was published April 1st, but clearly not.

Now, does someone think this will really work, or is it just a PR stunt to get people talking about Ryanair again (much like previous suggestions on charging to use toilets etc)?

I’m a fan of the Geograph project (in case you’ve not seen it, the Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland).

It seems lots of people on the Horse and Hound forum are getting upset over pictures of horses.
(continue reading…)

Nothing the post title doesn’t cover – over 500 police staff to take training to understand sex-change weirdo.

Seriously, WTF?

Have to repost this from today’s DailyWTF.

This is suppose to be a real product packaging for some sausages for a supermarket in Ireland, before the supermarket relised the problem and withdrew the product.

Background: Ainsley Harriott is a TV chef in the UK (I think he came over to the US at one point), he’s an alright guy but can be a bit annoying at times, and does get overly excited and irritating on his shows.

(To start with I didn’t read the instructions at the bottom of the packaging – took me a few seconds to get it :) )

Surprised nobody picked up on it before they went on sale!

Just read this post on 200 Weeks about the FA supporting a convicted criminal.

Ashley Sestanovich was a member of Grays Athletic who play in the Blue Square Premier League. He’s not currently able to play as he is being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure whilst serving 8 years for conspiracy to rob.

Sestanovich tipped off two illegal immigrants that 11 grand would be at a roofing company. The cash wasn’t there & a 42-year-old father of a newborn was shot, he died 7 months later.

Where does the F.A. come in? They kindly agreed with the player’s appeal against Grays Athletic’s refusal to pay him after his arrest. The club has been fined £500 & told to pay Sestanovich £14,000 within 2 weeks or the club will be banned from the league.

Club chairman, Mick Woodward, said the club would not be paying the money to someone who attended 3 training sessions & played 20 minutes of a pre-season friendly due to being involved in a ‘heinous crime’. He offered to pay the £14,000 “wages” to the victim’s family but the F.A. are enforcing their decision.

Um, so this “footballer” commits a crime, gets put away, and expects the club to still pay his “wages” – and the FA agree with this?

What the hell is this country coming to? I don’t bother with football anyway (especially the Premier league, it’s not about the sport anymore, it’s just a commercial thing), but as “PC 200″said, “if this is not yet another reason to switch support from football to another sport, I don’t know what is.”

Fair play to Grays Athletic for refusing to pay the money to a criminal, and I hope the FA see some sense.

A BBC report on this said:

The FA said because Sestanovich was arrested after he signed for Grays, the club were obliged to honour his contract until he was actually convicted of an offence, under contract law.

Um, he might have signed a contract, but I’d imagine that contract, like most employment contracts, included terms that the contract would be severed if you were convicted of criminal charges. Even if not, if you break the law in a serious way, you no longer deserve the protection of the law.

“PC 200” posted a blog entry about their force’s email filtering system which made me laugh enough to want to mention it here.

They block inbound attachments, which could be a pain, but is sensible enough.

However, they also block “bad” language (as I’m sure the police don’t get subjected to foul language often, and their poor, delicate sensitivities would be mortally offended by it….) – but then send you an email to report that an inbound mail was blocked, describing why:

You’ll get an email which says something along the lines of “you have been sent an email containing offensive or inappropriate language. The language contained is of a value of 60 points. The word was either one of the following or a derivative of: fuck, fucking, fuckers, mother-fucker, fuck-off”.

So, they’ll block the email containing the word that might offend you, then send you an email containing that word and many other alternatives of it!

And the other thing which intrigues me, is that somewhere in the Home Office a committee has sat around a table wondering how many points to give swear words. You can imagine it. A whole afternoon, or more, debating how many points to give ‘bollocks’. “OK, we’ll give ‘bollocks’ 50 points, agreed?” “No, if we give ‘bollocks’ 50 then we have to give ‘arsehole’ 65, surely”, “Yes, but if we give ‘arsehole’ 65 then we have to reduce ‘wanker’ to 63.” “OK, let’s give ‘bollocks’ 45.” “No we can’t do that because ‘balls’ is 45.”

I’ve been reading his blog "200 Weeks" for a while now, well worth a read.