Two useful tools for IE web devs

I was joined by "Wild" Bill Buchan this weekend for a spot of iSeries Geekery, Guinness,champ and Harbour Bar frolicary but more of that later.

Whilst Bill was saying "oh my life" and having pointer size issues. I did a couple of wee changes to some CSS on an app that was having IE issues. I am sure you know the type, looks fine in FF, Safari, Opera but goes tits up in IE. Now I have been using 2 wee tools that helps me with such things. Bill had not come either tool and suggested I throw it out to the web dev horde.

I am as I am sure you all are users of Firebug in FF and long for a similar product for IE. Well Companion.JS from the very nice people at MyDebugBar is a free product that "faces" the Microsoft Script Debugger in a very Firebug way. Full install instructions can be found at the link above, oh and did i mention it is free :-) we here at DYM like free! Free is good!

The other tool comes from the same crowd and is called "My Debug Bar" and although you have to pay for it, you can download it try before you buy.

Summary of features
* Menu to customize the DebugBar and check updates.
* Toggle the Development bar
* Alert on javascript errors
* Send page screenshot by email
* Color picker
* Resize IE window
* Zoom page
* View source code
* View MSHTML integrated ActiveX source code
* View HTML DOM Tree
* View original ad interpreted source code
* View tab attributes
* Edit tab attributes
* View HTTP and HTTPS headers
* View page cookies
* Validate html code for main page and frames/iframes
* List all javascript functions
* View javascript function code
* Execute javascript code in the currently loaded page
* Get information about currently loaded page

Now it doesn't debug JS (Companion.JS does that) but it does have a real whiz bang DOM inspector.. you can drag the inspector onto the browser pane point it at an element and get all the details about it. The CSS the element has (and has inherited)
for finding the source of those annoying glitches that make your web page look like shite it is invaluable. The HTML checker is pretty cool too and I use it frequently

Like I said previously you have to pay for MyDebugbar and it is 59 euros and if you do a lot of IE development this tool will pay for itself very quickly.

Interesting Notes Based Application - DOCOVA

All Notes-ers

I have just had a chat with a Canadian chap Gary Walsh from DLI who have a very interesting product called Docova I must add at this point that this post is not an advert or endorsement! However I did have a few "wow" moments when Gary Demo'ed it for me on Tuesday.

It is a Document Management System that is back ended by Notes NSFs and can be accessed thru the Notes Client and from a browser. It comes with a host of interesting bells and whistles and is priced very reasonably and it is well worth the time to have a look at their site. Particularly the 3 videos in the panel on the right that give a high level explanation/tour of the product.

If you are interested Gary does a good presentation and does not play the "pushy salesman" (an instant turn off for me) so don't be afraid to give him a buzz or drop him a line (contact details on the Docova site)

The "current economic climate" does not allow me at this time to think about a budget for Docova for my own Notes domains but Gary's contact details have gone into the "definitely keep" folder

I have become to busy to care.

Gentle reader ,

I had a bit of a shock today. It happened when I was listening to one of the podcasts I download weekly. A fine program called "Everyday Ethics" produced by the BBC and available here. It looks at local Northen Ireland and World problems with a Christian perspective but is accessible even for an apostate heathen like myself.

One of the articles on this weeks show was "Do journalists believe in poverty" and from this topic came my shock. To precis the questions the article poses ...

Do journalists accept that many people in the UK really are poor? Or is it the case that many journalists believe that people on benefits are working the system to their own advantage? How well does the media report on the realities of poverty in the UK today? Is there enough exploration of the causes of poverty, social deprivation and inequality? Are journalists at times part of the problem by re-presenting stereotypes and caricatures of poverty where they could be challenging myths and false portrayals? Are stories about poverty presented to broadcast, print and online audiences as though poverty was someone else's experience? Can a moral distinction between the 'deserving poor' and the 'undeserving poor' be detected in some media portrayals?

It would seem that we, the reading and watching public, are served up a mish mash of stereotype and urban myth more often than the actuality of poverty. Poverty is not NEWS it is OLDS... it has always been there and looks set to stay. My shock came not from the frightening figures that in 2006-7 there were 13 Million officially "poor" in the UK or that of that 3.9 million of them were children but from the fact I had forgotten was it actaully was to be poor.

Don't get me wrong I have never been poor. I came from a middle class family that wanted for little and my current situation is far from fiscally challenged. My experience of poverty was only as an observer. When I was involved with the Corrymeela Community (an organisation that my Mum and Day were and are actively involved with) and then later as a Nurse in Belfast I came across the sort of poverty that slowly grinds the soul until there is little left but a husk.I did come across the odd person who was working the system so they do exist but in general most were just poor, alive and supported by the state but mind numbingly poor. I had forgotten the truth about poverty that had motivated me to get involved in activities 30 years ago. I had forgotten the fire that observed social injustice had lit and had made me join the JCSS (Junior Council of Social Services) at school, I even won a prize in my upper sixth year. I had forgotten that ..

Poverty is not simply about not having enough money. It is about struggling to get through each day. About constantly making sacrifices. About living in a state of worry verging on perpetual fear ...

In starting a career, getting married, starting and bringing up a family I moved in a different direction and to be blunt I became to busy to care ... for that I am ashamed ... It is all to easy to get sucked in to the sterotypes we are fed by the media. In the run up to the election in America I heard on several occasions opnions posited that Obama's taxes and social reforms were "socialist" and "evil" or "Why should someone take my money (in taxes) and give it to someone else?" When I was in my late teens I would have not stood for rhetoric like that. I would have made a noise and got annoyed, 30 years later .. not a peep from yours truly .... for that I am ashamed.

I am not talking about the poor in Africa or some far distant "other country" who are also deserving of our help. What is more frightening is the fact that I am talking about that "far off country" that starts not far from the house where I live.

In the run up to the holiday season when the darkness of winter ends and the days start to get longer and bring the promise of Spring, I am going to remember that for every fraud and sponger "outed" in the press there are 100's if not 1000's who who are living day in day out in a condition that leads to misery and an early death. I WILL remember that this is happening in my own community. I will do something to make a difference.

I don't want want to be to busy to care.

So this is why the segway was invented - It all makes sense now

You will need to watch it until the end.....



Thanks Cousin Paul! :-)

Happy 230th birthday Voltaire from a world that thinks "The Shack" is wonderful literature

Ah yes gentle reader sorry for the gap in posts, last weekend was a trip down to watch Ireland get their bottoms slapped by the all blacks and this week was cram packed with work work work and more work.

Anyhow - today 21st November is the 230th birthday of one of my heroes, Francois Marie Arouet or as he is more commonly remembered Voltaire. We geeks, nerds and techie nere-do-wells are not known for our philosophical leanings ... well at least when sober. My father introduced me to the scribblings of this writer, philosopher, and wit many years ago.
Like any gael whether French,Scots or Irish Voltaire had an opinion about just about everything and was able to express it with a wit and style that has yet to be surpassed.

Do not be put off by his supposed atheist reputation, whilst he is credited with the tongue in cheek expression "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him") he found fault not with a deity but with organised religions, those that did the organising and those that allowed themselves to be organised.

Whilst for some reason people are going mad to buy and read that deeply irritating, cloyingly sentimental, shallow, mediocre, heap of crap that is "The Shack" do yourself a favour, nip down to your local library and see if you lay you hands on a modern translation of "Candide".

Oh If anyone wants to pass on a copy of "The Shack" to me this Christmas because "it is a beautiful book" that "will teach me things about the nature of God" , please please please please take the money you would have spent and give it to Medicne Sans Frontiers or Oxfam you will then be actually helping people rather than supporting the sort of mediocre writing that is best left inside Hallmark greeting cards.

"The Matrix" as it would appear had it run on Windows (honourable mention of UBUNTU after credits!)

From those charming folk at College Humor

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

God on Facebook

From College Humour Visit them here

A plea from the coding pencil - give now give often

Thanks to Martin Leyer's twitterstream (@leyer) for bringing this to our attention

Have a wee game - Go on you know you want to

Control Keys are ... left and right arrows to move and space to fire
You need to get at least 300,000 to get on the high score!

Coding for the Mouse Wheel in Javascript

This is quite an esoteric post for those JS heads out there ... how do you code for the user using the mouse wheel?

I was working on Name Picker V2.0.0 tonight and one of the "improvements" is that there will be both cursor key and mouse key support on the new format list (which is basically a vertical array of [div]s rather than a select object.

Most of the default form objects that support scroll bars will have mouse support. But what about [li] or some interesting nested [div]s or a [table] construct? With all this Web 2.0 stuff out there you may need to get to grips with doing something with the mouse wheel to allow the user to move to some element on your page. Here is how to do it ... (The O'Reilly Javascript Definitive Guide came in VERY handy for the event properties!)

Mozilla based browsers have a built in event called DOMMouseScroll YIPPEE! I hear you cry but guess what IE doesn't! Instead IE has onmousewheel on both the window and the document object. Browser compatibility don't you just LOVE it to bits!

Now I am going to get all Greek on you and talk about "Delta". Delta is the 4th letter of the greek alphabet and is used by math and other hard sum geeks as the symbol for some form of change. In this instance the change is the direction a user whizzes the mouse wheel and based on that direction the mouse wheel whizzing perform some wondrous code of your own devising.

OK there are some more gotchas for the JS coder.
IE stores delta in event.wheelDelta and positive values are UP negative are DOWN
Opera stores delta in event.wheelData and positive values are DOWN and negative are UP
Mozilla stores delta in event.detail and positve values are DOWN and negative are UP

Right first thing to do is write your handling code

function myWheelHandler(D)
{
  if(D<0)
  {
     ... do some DOWN code ...
  } else {
     ... do some UP code ...
  }
}

That's your bit done, now we have to bend the browsers to our will by writing some code to use instead of the default code

function myWheelFunction(event)
{
  var D = 0;
  // Catch the event for butter fingers IE
  // as it doesnt send event as an arg
  if(!event)
  {
    event = window.event
  }
  // if this is IE or OPERA delta is in wheelDelta
  if(event.wheelDelta)
   {
     D = event.wheelDelta
     // If we are in OPERA change the sign
     if(window.opera)
     {
     D = -D
     }
   } else {
   // OK I am going to assume Mozilla if not IE or OPERA
   // correct the signage to - is down and + up
    D = -event.detail
   }
  // Perform my fantastic wheel mouse code
  myWheelhandle(D)
   // Stop the default actions happening
   if(event.preventDefault)
   {
     event.preventDefault();
   }
   // needless to say IE needs this to cancel default actions
     event.returnValue = false;
   }
}

Right all that is left is to put some code somewhere in your code to override the default with your code.

// For Mozilla
  if(window.addEventListener)
  {
    window.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll",myWheelFunction,false)
  }
  // For IE and Opera
  window.onmousewheel = document.onmousewheel = myWheelFunction

So there you go, you can now code loads of lovely things for your mouse wheel operations on your web pages.

Name Picker V2.0.0 Update

Name Picker 2 didn't quite get as much work this weekend as I had planned due to some family commitments but work resumed today with the reformatting of the Name picker Type 1 "Single" was joined with Type 2 "Multiple" formats. These were achieved with the following code


myPicker = new NP_object();
myPicker.type=1;
myPicker.create();










myPicker = new NP_object();
myPicker.type=2;
myPicker.create();






I am no longer using a [select] to hold the found data but I am injecting [div]'s into the document and planting then in a reception [div] . Using this method gives me more control over the format of the item.










Particularly the extra data like phone number, email address, etc that are returned from the server. This data can now be shown/hidden by clicking on the twisty on the left of the name. I think this method is a more efficient use of the screen real-estate and allows the user to visually access the extra data without having to move their eye line away from the item they are clicking on.


More later .... time for tea!

Rememberance Sunday

It is rememberance sunday here in the UK and on the way to a family gathering in the south of the province and there was a programe on the radio which took my attention. It is 80 years since the end of the The Great War and the show focused on a group that became known as the "war poets".

I have never been able to put my finger on why the works of these poets attracted me even when at school when poetry was considered to be a necesary evil within English classes. There is one poem in particual that has stuck wth me. Written by Wilfred Owen whose poems where written in the trenches and who died only a week before Armistice -

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstruous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Name Picker V2.0.0 started

I recently got two messages on OpenNTF informing me that there was a bug in the multiple selection section code of my AJAX Name Picker and after some checking indeed there is! I had made a fairly minor change in a bit of what I was "sure" was unrelated JS and managed to duplicate all the data in an array. So sure was I that it was fine I didn't test all 3 types of name picker ~hangs head in shame~ I really should know better!

Anyway, it was a bit of code I wrote back in 2006 and as such it is starting to look a wee bit tired (as well as buggy). So I have started tarting it up and foremost amongst the changes will be that it will be a JS class NP_object and you will need only to instantiate a Name Picker object on the form onload event to create a Name picker that can be used anywhere on the form by attaching it to a form object event.

This evening I wrote the "injection" mechanism that creates and adds the Name Picker objects to your form/page's DOM. The default picker (single selection popup) looks like this and is fully drag and dropable.
So to the 2 people that are waiting for my fix to Name Picker V1, please be patient rather than fix the bug in the current release. You will be getting a "fully" tested newer version hopefully with more features.

I hope to also release this as a Google Desktop widget to allow your users to be able to get vCard like information from your PAB without the need to have the notes client active, but more on that later.

ILUG 09 - uniform (Male) beta 0.0.1 created

This will be the new face , or bottom half, of the ILUG gentle-person's apparel for 2009. Should you wish to appear at ILUG as a speaker this year you will have to provide your measurements well in advance.

So like Wild Bill, Coatsie and myself you might need to think about those extra pounds!

The kilt is black leather and will be worn with the prerequisite green polo shirt. The Sporran comes complete with hip flask and spare remote for the projector

Dominoyesmaybe's new job as an agony aunt for geeks

In the current economic climate (oh I am starting to hate that phrase) we are all faced with uncertain times and as of last weekend I have started offering myself as an Agony Aunt for all your geeky angst. No problem is too icky or horrible for the dedicated and professional team of fellow geeks who will give you grounded and well thought out advice. We have so far helped Mr X with his microwaved cheesy bagel problem (melted cheese is SO hard to get out of nylon!) Mr Y with his compulsive administration disorder and Ms Z from her fear of airport security checks.

This week we look at interpersonal relationships

Dear Dominoyesmaybe,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as

Fishing 5.0,
Rugby 3.0 and
Golf Clubs 4.1.6a

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,

Desperate.

DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind,
Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while
Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please goto: ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 fixpack. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program .These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend
Cooking 3.0 and
Hot Lingerie 7.7

Best of luck to you!
The Dominoyesmaybe Team

** Thanks to relationship specialist "Jim T" for his email input into answering this cry for help **

The ILUG 09 "fringe" preparation begins

Even though ILUG 09 is stil at least 7-8 months away, preparation is everything and at several previous events it has been noted that the local Celtic males did not appear in Kilts. Much thought and research has gone into the reason for this and in order that ILUG become more KILT-friendly we have taken delivery of several kilt friendly seats.

Now Wild Bill, Mr Mooney and Myself have no excuse not to startle the ladies and scare dogs that are small enuff to get a good upward glance.

How to install Ubuntu on XP as a Virtual Machine

Ok gentle reader

Last night I geeked out and stuck an UBUNTU V8.10 new VM on my thinkpad
Now I know that there are a large number of folk out there that know how
to do this but there may be those out there who have gone "eh?" every time
they hear one of the illuminatii mention that they have this or that as a
virtual machine. This was brought up clearly to me when sprog asked me
what I was doing and I found out he was unaware that you could do this.

So this is a "HOW TO DO" for those of you out there that might want to have
a look at Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular but you haven't got
a) The spare hardware to do it on another machine
b) The budget to allow you to get new hardware
c) The "I [heart] Ubunto" factor isn't strong enuff for you to drop your
XP or Vista partitions.
d) You don't know your arse from your elbow when it comes to "Virtual Machines"

Well I am here to tell you it is free, it is reasonably easy to do and should
take no longer than an hour or so. The longest task are the downloads.

Right! I did this on a Thinkpad T60 with 1Gb of memory, 40gb of free space on
my HD and XP SP 2 as the parent Operating system and this is the way I did it.

Step 1 :- Download QEMU from here
This little program allows you to create a "virtual disk" on your hard drive.

Step 2 :- Install this program. I installed it into a dir called c:\Ubuntu and this is reflected below

Step 3 :- Open a command window in XP
START / Programs / Accessories / Command Prompt
Type cd\
Type cd\Ubuntu
Type qemu-img.exe create -f vmdk Ubuntu.vmdk 10G
Type exit
This will create a file called ubuntu.vmdk which will be used as your "virtual disk" for your ubuntu install.

Step 4 :- Download the ubuntu ISO image file from here and save it in c:\Ubuntu . The file name will be ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso

Step 5 :- Download VM Player from VMWare here, it is free but you do have to register

Step 6 :- Install the VM Player, just accept all the defaults

Step 7 :- Create a text file in the c:\Ubuntu directory and paste the following into it

config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "3"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "Ubuntu.vmdk"
memsize = "500"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

ide1:0.fileName = " ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "Ubuntu"
guestOS = "ubuntu"
nvram = "Ubuntu.nvram"
MemTrimRate = "-1"

ide0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d 80 3e f2 32 56 75-44 a6 45 89 2b 4a 03 4b"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 80 3e f2 32 56 75-44 a6 45 89 2b 4a 03 4b"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:4a:03:4b"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
uuid.action = "create"
checkpoint.vmState = ""
tools.remindInstall = "TRUE"
#gui.fullScreenAtPowerOn = "TRUE"

Step 8 :- Save this file as c:\ubuntu\Ubuntu.vmx
*NOTE* the memesize=500 can be changed to reflect
your currently memeory. I use 1/2 my 1Gb and allocate 500mb
*NOTE* the line below should reflect the file you downloaded in step 4.
ide1:0.fileName = " ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso"

Step 9 :- Start the VM Player, there will be a shortcut on the desktop

Step 10: - Select "open" and browse to c:\ubuntu and click on ubuntu.vmx

Step 11:- A VM Window will open and the UBUNTU install will start Enter all data you are asked for and you can just accept the defaults and all should be well.
*NOTE* the disk format instal will install into the Virtual disk so your PC and it's current install will be totally safe. You will see that UbUntu.vmdk gets bigger and bigger.

Step 12: Let Ubuntu restart itself, this will only happen within the VM window as soon as you get the reboot screen close the VM window

Step 13: Open c:\ubuntu\ubuntu.vmx and change these lines

#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

to

ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"
#ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

This will give you an ordinary CD drive rather than the ubuntu install iso

Step 14: You can now delete the ubuntu install ISO image in c:\unbuntu

Step 15: Restart the VM Player open c:\ubuntu\ubuntu.vmx

Step 16: Logon to Ubuntu with the user name and password you created during the install
You may need to press + to use your keyboard in the VM window.

Step 17: Once Ubuntu starts, it will automatically start updating itself, as long as you
have an internet connection that is up and running the VM will use it and
you will be able to update your install with the most recent code. Let this
finish and perform an reboot when required.

Step 18: You are done, you have a running VM of Ubuntu on your PC running in a 10GB
hard drive in 500 mb of memory ... enjoy

Of sherry magnets, half hung McNaughton, time travelling cars,faery thorns and a November Walk

Gentle reader,

It is the weekend again and as I have had rants both last week and the week before I have deliberately had a quiet weekend so that this post will be less acerbic, I probably wont need to use the word F**K at all!

It being halloween (Samhain as it is know in the Celtic tradition) and even though I am a big skeptic when it comes to the supernatural, it is best not to press your luck were the faery are concerned. Take John Delorean, he of the "Back to the Future" car fame. Now his aluminium sports car was manufactured in Belfast.

Any of you that just said A-LOU-MIN-UM please repeat 10 times AL-YOU-MIN-E-UM! Everywhere else except USia and Canada can manage to put the "i" in ium so there will be NO exceptions on an Irish web site!.

During the building of the plant he was advised not to uproot a fairy thorn. A faery thorn is usually an ancient Hawthorn bush found in place that normally you wouldnt find it, like the middle of a field rather than in the hedge line. Being a smart,savy, secular McMerican Mr Delorean scoffed at the warnings of ill luck that would follow any interference with this ancient thorn tree. {link} So mess with it he did and look what happened to him and his company!

I may be a skeptic atheist ... but ... I make a point of not messing with the faery or sibh as they are known in Gaelic. (Sibh is pronouced Shee , as in Banshee which means "faery woman" in Irish).

Where was I ?... oh yes ... I had a quiet Friday and apart from a dander down the town on Saturday for coffee and a bowl of very fine Aubergine and Roast Pepper soup. The Fireworks came and went and the gray man was kept at bay for another year. The gray man is the ghostly personification of the "great hunger"that followed the Irish potatoe famine in the 1800's. At or around harvest, when the summer is dying, is generally a time to remember our own personal histories and the echoes that sing to us from the flames of an open fire on a November evening. I hope than each of you in your own way have kept the grey man and his dark hunger from your door this coming year :-)

So, Sunday rolled around and while not up early or anything remotely like it, I did manage to put the Sunday dinner in the slow cooker (my own version of Irish Stew) and pull my dodgey battery from the bike and set it up for a good long deep charge. Having done all that I prepared to go for my daily brisk walk. It being a pleasant autumn afternoon I decided to combine, forest, lake, river and sea all in one walk, so I jumped in the car and headed for the Mussenden Demesne, which is about 4 miles up the road past the turn to Castlerock.


This is place with a rather uniquely "irish" history. The whole demesne was built in 1785 by the 4th Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry and sherry magnet, Frederick Augustus Harvey who was ... well at least a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. There are the ruins of his house (Donwhill castle as it is known) and on the edge of a 120 foot cliff above the north Atlantic there is a small round building that bears a striking resemblance to the Temple Of Vesta in Rome. This is the library the bold bishop built for his cousin Frideswide Mussenden for whom he had the hots but alas she was already married isn't that always the way! Anyway there it stands some 223 years later a testament to one man's horniness for a lassie he couldn't have!

Regardless of the reason for building it has a view from Inishowen in the west to Fair head in the east, which is most of the north coast of Ireland in one panoramic gob smack of a view and well worth the walk if you happen to be in the area.

The estate straddles the main road and on the other side from the temple is a park now set aside for horse, cyclist and walker. This park has at it's centre a hill call Dungannon Hill. As hills go it is not a particularly big hill but it has, so the local archaeologists say, a 6000 year history. Like Mountsandel in Coleraine and the sand hills in Portstewart this was a place in which our ancestors set up their homes and lived of the land and sea shore. Today it is a place of ancient trees, leaf blown trails, small rivers, a ruined mill and a small shallow lake.


My parents used to bring us here here on family picnics when I was small as there were trees to climb, streams to splash in or create damn pools to keep the sticklebacks and small trout we caught Later I camped there on Dungannon hill with my teenage chums living off small trout from the streams and any unfortunate bunny that would cross our path. Later still it was a place where we would "walk out" with our current sweethearts, hand in hand kicking trough the leaves. This is one of those places where the lives of the visitors have left echoes of laughter in every nook and cranny.

It is a managed park, but whilst the paths are kept clear and easy to walk on, the forest itself is left pretty much alone. If a tree dies or is blown over it is not tidied up, it lies where it falls. Some would say this makes the place look untidy, for me I prefer it more "natural" :-)

Right at the end of the park is a road , where oh so I am told, an infamous criminal was caught in the eighteenth century. This sad we tale concerns Miss Ann Knox the daughter of Andrew Knox of Prehen House (near Derry) an influential and well to do gentleman. The man was John McNaughton a member of the same social class as Knox. Now John fell in love with Ann and tried to be near her at all times as one smitten often does. Andrew Knox opposed any marriage and both Andrew and it has to be said Ann wasn't that fussed about the attentions of John either.

McNaughton claimed that they had been secretly married. So Andrew Knox increased his efforts to protect his daughter and eventually, in 1760, set out to transport Ann to Dublin in a coach, protected by armed outriders.

John McNaughton and several associates concealed themselves on a little road. They stopped the coach and a short discussion ensued, followed by gunfire. McNaughton fired at the coach occupied by Andrew Knox and his daughter, and Ann died from the bullet. McNaughton fled. Armed searchers initially were unable to find him as the locals remained silent unwilling to talk or give aid to their landlords. Finally one man pointed to the hiding place and local tradition maintained that he promptly lost that arm in a accident in the small mill in the Mussenden park.

McNaughton caught, tried, convicted and sentenced to be publicly hanged in an open field near Strabane. He spoke to the crowd, saying he loved his wife and had been kept from her. The trapdoor opened and down he went ... but.. the rope broke and the crowd shouted for him to fly, but McNaughton declared that he was not going to be known as "half-hanged McNaughton" and advised the hangman to get on with his work. The rope did not break again but his name did live on in legend as "half-hanged McNaughton."

So there you go , my Halloween weekend walk with a smidgen of the weird ;-)
If you are interested in looking at some more photos of the walk you can find them here

So for the now , adieu and remember never eat rhubarb in bed!

A Halloween Warning

From @duffbert via twitter....

What annoyed me this weekend - Obama Vs McCain

Oh KNOB!

I can't avoid it any longer, I have, for the sake of international politeness and Irish/American detante, not made mention of the imminent exercise of electoral manumission in USia. However I have just watched the news and the pointless strutting and posturing that is being beamed onto every TV in the world has incensed me and I am monumentally fucked off with the whole thing.

Now I make no bones about my total disrespect for politicians and for the political process. If you follow my twitter stream you will have no doubt seen my description of the legacy of Pericles thus :-

If Politics is shite then politicians are the very thin toilet paper through which your fingers are prone to slip

@duffbert thought this was "Ewwwwww...." and @andreaw_m "YUCK!" and whilst @BillMalchisky thought the metaphor somewhat earthy, he then posited that ".. the purchase of a better quality paper would avoid the experience". Hmmm I am not sure about the purchasing of a new and better legislative assembly. Isnt that what we in the free world have already? For what are lobbyists if not the political machine's purchasing department?

USia is when it comes down to it, a two party system. Fair enuff. In the rest of the world where there are 2,3,or 4 party systems a stranger can ask "Which is which?" and you will probably be told that Party A is the "Right Wing" and favours big business, small government, the free market and trickle down economics. Party B is the Left and favours the working man (or woman), has it's big hairy nose into every facet of life and pushes a more regulated economy with a more structured distribution of wealth. Party C is in the centre and they really don't have policies they just want what YOU, the people want.

This is nice and simple and gives the stranger a grasp of what sort of political system the country operates under. However USia suffers from an advanced and debilitating phobia. It cannot,as a nation bring itself to say the word "socialist" without depositing a healthy gob in the nearest spittoon. As a result of this debilitating affliction American politics has had to evolve in a different direction. There are two parties which in the rest of the world would be a Left and Right but in USia there is the "Definitly-not-left-no-siree-we-are-very-right-but-not-right-enough-to-be-nasty" party and the "Not-as-right-as-them-but-hey-we-are-not-socailists-you-hear-defin-fecking-tootly-not-socialist" party.

AS far as I can see these two parties comprise of very very rich people who have meetings and take lots of $'s from other very very rich people and manage their affairs so that over the last 50 years the status quo has remained the same. There was a fairly recent rally at which McCain compared Obama to a European Socialist Leader.The BBC found a "talking head" (who must have been totally unaware that the BBC was a European company) who went somewhat further by saying "A vote for Obama was a vote for America taking the first steps towards a socialist tyranny like they have in Europe."

[sarcasm]Oh woe is me! Living in this despotic hell , this arbitrarily oppressive purgatory run by socialist deamons ready to strip me of my things and feed me piecemeal to the plebs OH America save me from this curse! [/sarcasm]

That took me a little by suprise as the only tyrannical sort of behaviour I have come across recently was the TSA in Newark Airport who indeed brought to me a new understanding of the phrase "abitaryly oppressive despot".

So lets alienate all my USian "Definitly-not-left-no-siree-we-are-very-right-but-not-right-enough-to-be-nasty" party readership. Ms Palin or as I prefer to call her "The Anti-Strumpet" would appear to have eclipsed any grey haired gravitas that Mr McCain has brought to the proceedings. Worries about her underwear budget and whether her knicker gussets have been federally funded have rocked not only America but the rest of the world and the fact that contrary to good non-socialist policy she appears NOT TO HAVE GONE TO SPECSAVERS preferring the Dolci and Gabbana Joe Ninety/Chairman Mao look! That being said for my office party I am going to get my hair Palin'ed Never let it be said that I am not at one with the Throb and Ebb of modern fashion!

Still on the "Definitly-not-left-no-siree-we-are-very-right-but-not-right-enough-to-be-nasty" side. Has no one thought to ask OK you have had 8 years - what have you done? The government is exactly the same size, (**Update** Bob tells me it is bigger) the tax burden on the population is pretty much the same as it always is (**Update** Bob tells me it is bigger) your have allowed the economy to get fucked on a global scale, china now near as damn it owns the country, we are fighting 2 wars that show no signs of ending now tell me why the fuck I should vote for your lot again? It would be a question I would ask regardless of my politics. But like over here in Ulster were we have the "We Hate Catholics" party and the "Kill all Protestants" party the WORSE thing you could do is vote for the other side for the simple reason they ARE the other side and they eat babies and have forked tails and are very possibly closet socialists.

Ok t'other side
Obama is all for "change" HA! my fat arse he is. He is a politician and they no more like change than a Notes geek likes Exchange!

We have an MLA over here Caitríona Ruane who is all for change too, but has managed in 5 years to make absolutely NO DIFFERENCE WHAT SO EVER and she has only 1 thing to do. This is because everyone thinks change is a wonderful thing until they have to do it, then they don't like it.

Change is Paisley shaking hands with Adams, Mandella shaking hands with de Klerk That is REAL change. That is a sea change that you can feel as the hair on your neck stands up with anticipation. Does Obama herald that change? Bollocks he does! My hair is sullen in it's refusal to stand. "He will be the first black president" so fecking what? Is the amount of melanin in the skin a measure of a man's worthiness? I have a sister with loads of freckles perhaps she could run for President over here. Similarly I have heard "But she will be the first woman president!" when Hilary was around. So not only colour but the possession of ovaries, uterus and breasts are the defining paradigm of this brave new "changed" world we are being ushered into?

The change that Obama champions is as ethereal as pixie dust and in 4 years time people will be asking "so what did change?" and as usual the answer will be ...nothing, nada, not a thing, zippo. This is the way the world works and particularly it seems in modern America. In January in the vaulted halls of power it will (probably) be the same old whore wearing a different dress.

I hope it won't. I really do! So this time next year lets all meet back here and see what has happened in the intervening 12 months any bets that anything will have changed?

**Udpate** Down in the comments Bob informs me that the US government is a LOT bigger than it was 8 years ago, as is the annual budget deficit, not to mention the national debt. LOTS bigger and the tax burden on the middle class is WAY higher than it was 8 years ago... in that case perhaps things CAN only get better.. we shall see. ...oO(but wait isnt Bush in the "Definitly-not-left-no-siree-we-are-very-right-but-not-right-enough-to-be-nasty" party which is the wee gov,low taxes party? Ah the sweet sickly taste of pure irony!)

Rolls Royce help test US high speed trains - with chickens

Scientists at Rolls Royce built a gun specifically to launch dead
chickens at the windshields of airliners and military jets all
travelling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent
incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the
windshields.

American engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and
a gun was sent to the American engineers.

When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken
hurtled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed
it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the
engineer's back-rest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the
cabin like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Yanks sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the
experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the
British scientists for suggestions.

You're going to love this.......

Rolls Royce responded with the following one-line memo:

Defrost the chicken !

(Thanks to my mate Derek for that!)

A Credit Crunch Variation on a 419 Theme

I got this in the mail this morning. It is good to see the 419'ers are adapting
to the new world where people are out of work, or worried about work, or need
extra money. So what so you need right now? Thats right some fecking arsehole
of a con-main pretending to be from Virgin and offering you £1500 a month (at
least they got the currency right!)

[sarcasm]my faith in human nature is restored once again![/sarcasm]

Here are the headers

Return-path:
X-Modus-BlackList: 194.46.8.182=OK;Apollackiwan@kvhadvoc.nl=OK
X-Modus-Trusted: 194.46.8.182=YES
X-Modus-Audit: FALSE;0;0;0
X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true
X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AtPnAOvrAEk9xlHzWmdsb2JhbACDVh4hA4NSAYFYh2GCQi8
X-IPAS: positive-out
Received: from adsl-195-098-012-192.dynamic.nextra.sk ([195.98.12.192])
*************** 24 Oct 2008 04:30:23 +0000
Message-ID: <000601c935dc$05bd9398$b2847380@vgisgqv>
From: "edvard boaz"
To: <****************nternet.com>
Subject: Apply for open job positions
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:42:51 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2727.1300

and here is the message

Virgin.com

Looking for part-time job?

In 2008 Virgin became more global than ever before, because creating and capitalizing
on opportunities is about staying on the move.
We have a vacant position “Private Client Manager” in our team and will
be glad to have you work with us.

This is part-time job (2-3 hours a day, except holidays) and the position provides
support filling the transactions of our customers.
We deal exclusively with private clients with special requirements for high speed of
receiving funds for their business .
Consumers value the services we offer. What we do, helping people stay connected,
brings vitality to relationships.
And thinking responsibly for the company and the community is the anchor of how we do
business

Your work would be basic at first , yet thorough - you will make transfers for our
clients to suit their needs.
Our mangers will assist you during the trial period and explain everything you will
need to know.
We offer a competitive salary: for the first month you will get 1700 GBP for your
work,
the next month your salary will be increased if you do your work responsible and on
time.

Send us an e-mail to: <!-- Located Email Address --><a href="javascript:press_email('hrmanager.levinson@gmail.com')">hrmanager.levinson@gmail.com</a>

with phone numbers and time to reach you, and we will contact you and answer all your
questions.

Try us and you'll be glad you did!

Regards,
James Levinson
HR Manager,Virgin.com

What a TWONK!

The infrequent Dominoyesmaybe Heath and Beauty Tips post

Gentle reader

Having just discovered that you can get a Bingowingoplasty it must be time for an update on the DYM waistline containment program.

As you may know several of the luminaries (and me) of this Yellow Bubble we call home are trying their best to emulate Northern Rock and shed more than a few pounds. We are each doing it in our own ways. Mine is "walking briskly" and scaring the occasional small dog that crosses my path when I am listening to Disturbed on the iPlod. There is nothing quite like "inside the fire" to put the fear of god into a Yorkshire terrier :-)

Anyway here is the news.. as of the Pre-Shower, Post-Poo totally naked (except for the tache) weigh in this morning I was 14st 6lbs AND ... wait for it... I could read the scales without having to push the belly out of the way!

That's equates in FatLardiespeak "two notches in the belt"

I deserve beer, curry and chocIlate in large amounts ... now!

However there is a problem, as you are well aware the economy has not only gone down the tubes but is out the other end and is wondering when the bars open so that it can make it's way as quickly as possible into the vomit encrusted gutter of parsimony. This leads me to a quandary, as there are now two notches in the belt I am becoming reminiscent of a rather sad white version of "MC Hammer" to the point where when my trousers catch in the breeze I get the urge to shout "U can't touch this!" , I fear a trip to the local male clothing emporium is on the cards.

To say I dislike shopping for clothes is a dramatic understatement at the ultra violet end of the litotesesque spectrum. There should be a place you can go and say "trousers,black, that fit" or "Jeans please .. quickly" and thats would be that.

For Fecks sake!

Clothes shopping has become the couture version of getting a simple cup of coffee at Starbucks!

Starbucks prole - "Does sir want his Skinny Triple Expresso Caramel Frappochiachoccomocchachino with no cream, chocolate and cinnamon sprinkles in a bowl,a bucket or a trough?"

Me - "NO I JUST WANT A FECKING CUP OF SODDING COFFEE THAT IS POSSIBLE TO DRINK BEFORE THE ONSET OF THE NEXT ICE AGE.........PLEEEEEEEEASE?????"

~sigh~ There is more chance of getting that doyen of twonkdom and front man of Coldplay, Chris Martin to write a decent pop song about the joy of banjo bolts than there is of getting a simple cup of coffee from starbucks.

I digress, I enter a likely looking emporium and some infant with hair spiked in purple pig fat, (sorry the sprog tells me that should be "product-ted hair") looks up forlornly as you entrance has forced them to leave MySpit or Bleedboo on his iPhone.

"imjohnandimdelightedtobeheretohelpyou" he mumbles through 3 and half tonnes of mouth piercings.

No don't get me wrong USia has given us many great and wonderful things like Vanilla Creamer and the half-a-cow-on-a-plate steak but here in Europia we seem to have imported this insistence that I as a customer need to know the name of every unfortunate waif that has the misfortune to serve me in a retail interaction - I dont need nor want it thank you very much! Neither do I need to know that for them it will be a joy so unbounded that is surpasses that of Pope Julius II when he saw the completed Sistine Chapel ceiling.

They are my waiter/shop assistant/golfball cleasning operative/plumber or dental nurse not my new best friend. It is not a difficult concept. I know I am a customer and it comes as no surprise to me that they work here, so please, a simple "hello" is more than adequate I think I have a grasp of the dynamics of the rest of the transaction.

"Jeans " I say "I need jeans"

"K" sniffs the youth, nearly inhaling a 3 ounce nose clamp stud.

I hurriedly review my memory for the best way to do the Heimlich's maneuver on someone who has applied large quantities of grease in their hair.I wonder is there way to avoid sticking your nose into the middle of that spiky oily mess?

He leads me to the Jeans rail where there are a bewildering array of jeans. Now in my day there were Wranglers and Levi's and perhaps Lee Coopers if you proffered the "softer" look. They were proper jeans that stood up by themselves when they were new and you had to sit in the bath wearing them so they shrunk to fit. That came with the added bonus of getting a lovely indigo bottom which we wore with pride!

Now there are a bewildering plethora of makes, none of which I have heard of and all of which are not jeans. They are preshrunkprefadedstonewashed and SOFT! and horror of horrors most do not have a crotch rivet!

WTF?

What do young folk do now instead of that jolly jape we played on drunken chums in the past ... oh you know the one ... a chum passes out and you hold a soldering iron to the crotch rivet until they wake up .. oh how we laughed at that one, happy times ~sigh~ aye indeed happy times.

Time for bed ... and remember children never run with scissors!

The British Humanist Society take a stand .. probably.

Well this a start I suppose :-)

It is almost definitely maybe making a stand what what we probably are sure about sort of.

I love the quote frm Christian Voice's spokestwonk Steve Green

"Bendy-buses, like atheism, are a danger to the public at large

Hey if that is the level of my danger to the public I feel a lot better! I have always been told that I am a "servant of Satan" but it seems I may be a "Servant of Volvo"

The Chums that share my workspace

I am sure we all have little friends that live on our desks were we work. So here in a "grumpy old man" annex to the "this-is-where-I-work-picture" meme here are my desk dwelling chums.This is "Pus Bucket" he is my coding geek teddy to whom I swear and cuss when I forget the "new" in Dim Session as NotesUIWorkspace. He can swear fluently in 5 languages (not including teddy bear) and doubles as a ICBM (Inter Cubicle Ballistic Missile) and a guard bear should the need arise and the proles in operations get to frisky and try to steal my highlighters!!

And this chap is iDjDog who chooses my listening for the day. If you wind him up he leaps in the air and lands with sufficient force to ping the iPlod. His personal music preference is "New-Wave -Death-Happy-Acid-Metal-Funk-TexMex-Fusion" so sometimes I do smack him on the arse and rub his nose in some Marilyn Manson.

Geeky home made gadgets

Gentle reader
If i were to feel the need to reinforce my claim to "geekdom" i would use this link! This chap is a muso-geek's geek. He makes his own gadgets .. i am so jealous I wish I had the time and expertise to do the same

Drag and Drop Part II

Further to my post of Friday on drag and drop here is some other thoughts I had when commenting the code than perhaps were not obvious from the previous post.

YUI comes complete with a PROXY object which allows you to drag a proxy version of the thing you click on rather than the thing itself. I deliberately didn't use this method because I wanted to maintain the list on the left AFTER the drop had taken place because users may want to drag a customer to more than one date on the calendar and dropping the actual customer object would remove it from the list.

So ... I use the following methodology.

1. I have a CSS hidden [div] object that I use as a proxy. It has an ID of "drag" and it is defined at the start of the calendar.html page.

2. I use the onmouseover/out events on the customer list objects to duplicate the innerHTML and position the proxy object exactly on top of the customer object and then display it for the user. This means that the user now sees the proxy object rather than the actual object.
Needless to say if the user moves to a new customer object the PROXY object moves with it, From a user perspective this appears to be a rollover effect.

3. When the user clicks on the customer they are clicking on the PROXY rather than the actual customer object. This "picks up" the proxy and the drag starts. When the PROXY moves away from the list the original customer object is still there on the list and can be used again.

While I was at the commenting I made the entries that where on the calendar drag and drop-able as well. There is an issue with turning off the proxy element when you leave it.. i will have to have a think about that and a play with some event generators.

I have popped the commented file up onto OpenNTF for anyone that might be interested you can get it either from my ISP's server here or from the OpenNTF code bin here.

A bit of a rant - Faith Healing

It has been at least a couple of months since I have had a rant and today I will rectify that as I am monumentally pissed off and I have a feeling I may really "go off on one", so consider this a warning and if rants about religion are not your thing don't read the bit in the box below!.

Here we go..
If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I sometimes get a bit cross about not so much "religion" but "religious people". My last rant was about a certain MLA (like an MP but a Northern Irish version) who believes that being Gay in the eyes of God and humanity is comparable to Child Molestation and Murder. This MP is the chairperson of the Health Committee and remains uncensored and unpunished for such dreadful utterances. This rant is not about her this time, another group of "happy smiley people" have raised my ire.

Every Saturday for the last year or so a local church group have set up chairs, speakers and a big banner in the centre of town. This is a large blue banner claiming "HEALING" in large white letters, soothing music plays in the background and lots and lots of leaflets like the one opposite are handed out by "Happy Smiley People"

There are usually only a few HSP leafleting but today there were dozens of them! Some of which would not take a polite "no thank you" as a reply. But it is not my discomfort at their antics that I am ranting about today.

You can click on the image above .. but for those not bothered the leaflet says ...
"Need Healing? God can heal you today!
Do you suffer from Back pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction,Cancer, Ulcers, Depression,Allergies, Fribomyalgia,Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, or other sickness? We'd love to pray for your healing right now!"
... It continues ...
"God loves you and can heal you from any sickness today"
... and concludes ...
"You have nothing to lose, except your sickness!"

Quite frankly this is appalling! Where I to set up in a similar way and give away "Purple Pixie Dust" making the claim that "Purple Pixie Dust can heal you form any sickness today". I would be taken away by the local constabulary and told in no uncertain manner to cease and desist. Yet Saturday after Saturday there they are under their HEALING banner extolling something that has the same efficacy as my imaginary Pixie dust.

J'accuse - Reeling in the sick with well chosen words.

Now lets be clear here, they specifically ask if you have "Back pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction,Cancer," etc , and then claim "... can heal you from any sickness today". This is not a claim that God MIGHT heal you. This is a claim that God CAN heal you and not tomorrow or the next daty.. but today! As there is a time frame mentioned this adds to the implication that it will happen today. For example "I can fix your computer today" would be taken by 99% of people to mean "I will fix your computer today". There are very very few people, if any at all , that would believe I meant "I might fix your computer today"

To most people the verb "to heal" means to make healthy or restore to health and to be free from ailment. Their claim is "to heal" so the public is more than justified in expecting that they will be made free from illness and returned to health.

For misleading the sick - HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME

J'accuse - Peddling the fantasy of efficacy to the sick

Now before I am accused of being "anti-god" I am not! The published claim on the leaflet ".. can heal you from any sickness today" I am not disputing at this time the existence of God what I am disputing is the claim that by whatever method actual measurable things will happen today. There is zero supporting evidence on the leaflet and only anecdotal "Oh I saw [someone] cured of [something] " evidence.
Which is fine but when I inquired about the "Morbidity and Mortality" figures which any orthodox treatment or medical practice would have, I was met with blank looks. M&M statistics record the details of both the successes and the failures. These are very important for the continued development of treatments and ability of a Doctor to give an accurate prognosis but sadly missing from this group's mindset.
Would you feel safe if a doctor treated you on the basis of his cleaning lady telling him"Oh I saw another doctor in a different practice do this and it works".

Were there even the slightest shred of truth in this claim or any noticeable efficacy on the ill why is the NHS not rushing people to the prayer ward rather than ICU? Why do the legions of oncologists not prescribe prayer as the cure for cancer before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy? The answer to both these questions is because "prayer therapy" to whatever supernatural entity has never had any demonstrable effect! It is simple market forces.

People want to be well
When they are ill they want to get better
They go to the place most likely to make them better

If prayer therapy had any demonstrable, reliable, repeatable effect people would go "Oh that works really well" and all of a sudden we wouldnt need the hospitals we have now.

People have voted with their feet with the option that works most of the time.

For peddling this fantasy of efficacy as truth - HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!

J'accuse - Gross Medical Ignorance and Misconduct

Before I am accused of ignorance of my chosen subject I was a nurse for many years before becoming a geek and I come from a family of Doctors, Nurses and Therapists so I am very familiar with medicine. Should this group ever have taken an interest in the ethics of orthodox medicine they might have come across the medical bon mot, primum nil nocere (First do no harm) or the more recent addition "and to avoid attempting to do things that other specialists can do better"

They do not do a review of your medical history, they do no diagnostic tests, they sit you down, accept what you are telling them at face value and then ask an invisible supernatural being to make the illness go away. That is all there is, no more no less.
And this in my opinion is dangerous.

For example a man approaches the group one Saturday and presents himself to be cured of Asthma. Unknown to the people praying he is suffering from a psychotic disorder, one of the symptoms of which is very low self image. The prayers don't work. The patient is then left wondering why the treatment did not work or worked with less than a total cure. Since he has low self image he naturally blame themselves rather than God or the people praying for the failure, thus reinforcing his own pathology and making him worse! How does this fit in with primum nil nocere. Do these agents of a supernatural healing entity even care that this might be the case? Do they do even a rudimentary medical check of who they are treating? Are they treating someone with Münchhausen's syndrome? Are they aware that when treating a person with sore shin for pain they in fact may need to be treating for cancer as the pain is caused by a spinal tumour in the sacral area?

It certainly appears they do not!

Do they wash their hands between patients as anyone with half a notion of basic hygiene would do?

It certainly appears from my observation that they do not. I do hope none of the patients has MRSA or C.Difficile!

HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!

J'accuse - willfully making a spectacle of the sick in their time of need.

Do they treat the person with the respect and dignity they deserve by treating them in private out of the public gaze. You would expect a doctor, nurse or even an agent of "WooWoo" magic like a homeopathic practitioner to do?

No they do not!

You are perhaps desperate for relief so you sit down on a chair in the center of town on a crowed Saturday morning and allow yourself to be surrounded by people who lay hands on you and pray. In doing so you become the focus of the attention of not only the people praying, but of the passing public who can if they so desire watch as the patients sit clutching their handout hoping that they will be the case that proves the claim for a cure today just like the handout implies.

Like some awful form of "Big Brother" or "X Factor" the town center has for 3 hours on a Saturday become "Coleraine's Got Diseases!" I half expect a preacher with a microphone to declaim "Debbie with the Arthritis in your knees COOOMEEEE ON DOWN!"

For treating the people in need of help with less decency and dignity than a carnival show man. HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!
If you have not realised that the people who come to you for help are regarded as objects of public spectacle. HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!
If you are doing it deliberately you are without doubt loathsome attention seeking whores who use the sick for your own proselytizing purposes - HANG YOUR HEADS IN SHAME!

Is it just me? Am I the only one that finds this horribly wrong and a ghastly abuse of those in need of real help and medical support?

I think that you (the group) should

a) WASH YOUR HANDS BETWEEN PATIENTS if not for their sake for your own!

b) At least pay lip service to the fact that you could potentially be causing harm and offer proper non-religious medical counseling for the cases that God chooses not to cure

c) Take the process of praying inside NOW and allow their "patients" the dignity of privacy afforded by every orthodox medical practice and the lion's share of the alternate ones too.

d) Be considerably more honest about the prognosis in your leaflet.

"We will pray for your healing, however while we believe that God can cure you, this claim has not be substantiated by the same rigorous methods and standards you demand from other medical practitioners. These methods and standards are enshrined in law for your protection - we do not offer these standards as part of our service.

Indeed it would be dishonest of us to say that God Will Cure You. Likelwise we do not mean to suggest in any way that a cure will happen today or in fact any time soon. God may or may not help you or he may help you in a way that you don't expect, (this may include death - we just can't say at this time). In short we just don't know if this will work for you.

If you do get better we reserve the right to claim that our prayers cause it but should you not be healed or get worse ... well we are sorry but God moves in mysterious ways. These ways may seem entirely arbitrary but we just don't know the mind of God. Please don't ask for the number of people who were NOT cured today as we don't appear to know that either. We don't keep medical records like other more orthodox medical practitioners so we don't know which prayers work best if at all.

***PLEASE NOTE*** God at this time chooses not cure amputees or people afflicted with genetic disorders"

This would at least be a more honest approach! Oh and while I am on "honest approaches" One would hope that the earthly agents of a supreme being would at least aspire to honesty. But I now know this is not the case, I was approached by a group from the same church whilst out for a walk by the river not long ago. They approached me initially saying they were on a "treasure hunt" and needed my assistance in finding some of the stuff on their list. However after some beating around the bush what they REALLY wanted was to find out if I had any illnesses.
Yes one of the items on their list was
"DO YOU HAVE ANY OF THESE ILLNESSES..."
I was gob-smacked at the temerity of it!
The group consisted of 5 or 6 some of whom where young children, such a good example of "ethical" religion at work, but hey! it is lying for their buddy Jesus and that makes it fam-dabby-fecking dozy!

If I complain, which I have, there is an inertia inherent in the powers-that-be to get involved in something to do with "religion" the police believe it to be a council matter and the council believe it to be a police matter. So I am left with having to cope with a status quo that stinks of all that is wrong with religion.

Create a web based Drag and Drop Calendar

As part of my "spreading the domnio love" I have for the past year or so been a "yoda" to a Notes Developer who wanted to start branching out into more web based apps. Now in typical DYM form fate does not thrust me an apprentice with whom I can share the odd beer at the weekend. Oh NO! My "Luke Skywalker" does not live in Ireland! C'est la vie :-)

Anyway she asked me the other day how she could make one of her CRM calendar facilities a bit flashier and more modern and I like a fool said "why don't you do it in AJAX and while you are at it incorporate Drag and Drop?"
"Oh that would be good" she said "How would I do that?". My bluff was well and truly called! I said I would have a look at it this evening and send her an example over the weekend. After a certain amount of head scratching and asking myself "How would Chris Blatnick do it?" I fired up the DYM PC and started to code.

One of the problems with calendars and domino has been how absolutely SHITE they look on the web and building any sort of functionality into them was a labour of hercules which involved far to much futtering about with $ fields and the like. My non-domino alter ego PHPYouWillYouWill (tm) gave me a stout dig in the ribs and whispered in my ear, go on break the 11th commandment, use the domino server as a back end server and do nearly everything in JS. I know that this in some quarters sufficient for my domino woggle to be ceremonially crushed as LS. However in mitigation my design runs quite happily on servers V6 and above and the Domino Web Server way back then was a bit ... well it was a lot ... EUCK.

The premise of this example is simple, you have two forms Customer which stores customer data and Appt which stores an Appointment with a customer on a particular day. This data needs to be presented in a MONTH view to the user. The users need to be able to schedule a meeting with a customer on a particular day so they also need to be able to
a) Find a customer in the application
b) Drag the customer onto a date cell which will create an APPT form in the back end NSF

I am used to the YUI framework and one of these days I will get all DOJO but for the moment I know what I am doing with YUI and it has a nice easy D&D implementation.
You register the dragable object and target objects, define a couple of handler functions and Robert is your mothers brother.

Now please remember this is a simple app written as an example of "how I would start to" rather than an actual full functioning app and it was written in 3 hours this evening. Anyway it looks like this, (Click on image for a better look see)


A: Controls for moving the viewable month around.
B: Search Bar á la Google that allows typeahead look up of the customers.
C: Results from the search appear here.
D: An Item being dragged from the list to the calendar.
E: As the Customer passes over a calendar cell the cell is highlighted.
F: An existing Appointment in the calendar.

I used YUI 2.2.4. as the framework for the AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.

Like I said it looks kinda better than the ordinary one and isn't all that complicated at all (it took me 3 hours to code up from scratch!) and will run happily on a V6 onwards server you don't need any on the V8 fancy pants stuff and all the YUI stuff is contained in the NSF.

If anyone is interested an uncommented version of the file can be downloaded here.
Download it, Sign it, pop it on your server and goto crm.nsf/calendar.html

If you think it is useful let me know and I will definitely pop the commented version up on OpenNtf (once i have commented it that is!)

More Xtreme Parachutes .... LOVELY

Well yesterday's query as to the veracity of the parachutist video was answered my my Cuz Paul in the comments.. Your knees would become "ear extensions" after such a jump HOWEVER he did supply this .. a catapult launch.. which I am assured is Pukka!....
I lead such a boring life!

B.A.S.E. Jump Catapult | Viral | SPIKE.com

My Goodness this looks like Fun!

I wonder if this is real?
I wonder what my BASE jumping cousin would make of it?

Joke of the day (American but rather good)

A college professor was doing a study testing the senses of first year schoolchildren, using a bowl of Fruit Loops, the cereal with the hole in it.

He gave all the children the same kind of loop, one at a time, and asked them to identify them by colour and flavour. The children began to say:

'Red............cherry,' '

Yellow.........lemon,'

'Green..........lime,

'Orange.........orange.'

Finally the professor gave them all 'honey' loops.

After eating them for a few moments none of the children could identify the taste.

'Well,' he said 'I'll give you all a clue. It's what your mother may sometimes call your father.'...

One little girl looked up in horror, spat hers out and yelled:

'Oh My God!!!! They're arse-holes !!'

Interesting Credit Crunch Statistics

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left. If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left. But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, and then turned in the cans for recycling, you would have $214.00. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle!

So DRINK BEER!

Some thoughts as we circle the rim and contemplate the flush.

Hey Ho! :(
Another Saturday Night® has come and gone leaving me with the uneasy feeling that I am missing something. I have left "The Sprog" off at a local nite club and by the time I was turning the corner to come home he was surrounded by a gaggle of young ladies. Was I ever in that same enviable position? I am sure I would remember if I have been ... wouldn't I?

Perhaps my somewhat glum mood is because I live up here around 55º north were the trees are now well on the way to baldness and there is a nip to the air even at midday that makes one think that perhaps wearing a teeshirt under the shirt is a good idea. When out for my wander in the wood this afternoon the stands of Silver Birch were as picturesque as always but in a cold, asleep sort of way and at their base they was a massive covering of little 'rooms
Yes I did get down on my knees to take this snap and yes I did manage to get back up again, although it was accompanied by a series of pops, creaks and groans commensurate with my age and waist measurement and no I didn't sample any and yes this IS me being normal.

I bumped into another "brisk walker" on my travels and we nodded at each other and I grunted the usual Irish-English greeting of "bout you?" which roughly translates to "Hale and well met fellow traveler on the deep pile of life's rich carpet" ... which is like life's rich tapestry but you walk on it... My fellow walker nodded back and responded in English-English by muttering "Good afternoon". This set me to thinking - there is a world of difference between the rich patois of the provinces and that spoken by those on t'other side of the Irish Sea.

One of the elder statesmen of the family told me before going to University in England that should I as a stranger to the area ever get lost that it was vital I NEVER ask for directions! For the English are too damn polite and would not increase your worry by telling you they didn't know. As a result their directions would unerringly be incorrect however by some strange twist of the knife of fate these self same directions would unerringly end up depositing you in Llanacelligcwangorallicallywagagogogogogoichllanelliconwallag in Wales!

I shared a room in the university residences with a nice chap called Phil who was by birth, inclination and profession a "cheeky cockney" and for all of the first term I have no idea what he was saying. I just nodded, smiled and offered to buy drink which seemed to do the trick and we became firm friends although I still have no idea what "Stone Me Pink and twoddle me parsnips but this berk comes up with a boat like Abbyssina and I rogered him up the Old Kent road" means and I have a feeling the world is a better place for my ignorance.

Oh I feel a tangent coming on where did i put the ellipsis? Ah there it is ...

The world, it seems, is wandering off down the road to rack and ruin and the UK politicos at Westminster, the birth place of elective democracy and as such reffered to as the "MotherF****r of all Parliaments" (but only by the Irish) are plonking around waving their arms and making a lot of noise. Precious little else other than this verbal diarrhoea and certainly not anything that resembles sense, common or otherwise, is dribbling from the vaulted halls of democracy.

Gentle reader, lest you be misled, be assured the fact that the Politicians fall into the same logical set as chocolate fire guards does not surprise me. Democracy has since the time of Solon and Pericles in Athens been a semi official form of care in the community for those afflicted by the debilitating disorder of "wanting to be a politician" which has symptoms very similar to ASW except you will probably be asked to appear on Question Time more often than an average ASW afflictee would expect.

The epoch of Maggie T and Ronnie Raygun where Milton Friedman's economic brain farts defined the next 30 years has now ground ignominiously to a halt. I for one hope that the man who found it well nigh impossible to admit that markets could go wrong is at least blushing in his coffin. As an atheist I don't believe in an afterlife but on this occasion a nice warm corner of hell set aside for Friedman and his ilk would be useful to have. So I have contented myself by imagining a demon inserting ungreased sea lions up the self same nobel laureate's bum whilst being forced to listen to Coldplay in one ear and Celine Dion in the other.

On a side note the aforementioned sea lion stuffed economist visited Iceland in the autumn of 1984, met with prominent Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the "Tyranny of the Status Quo" which made me dislike him from the start. I quite like Status Quo, they are far from Tyrants and only an ignorant oaf would make the mistake as you need to know 4 chords to be a tyrant and one of them needs to be a flattened 5th sustained!
Friedman participated in a lively television debate on August 31, 1984 with leading socialist intellectuals, including President Grimsson who got pissed off cos Friedman charged them for the appearance and then refused to buy his round at the bar. This aside he (Friedman) made a great impact on a group of young intellectuals in the Independence Party.
**Note** By intellectuals I actually mean "deluded twonks usually called Henry that were manifestly driven by greed, stupidity and porn" but this was the 1980's and I want to keep this sentence in character.
This group of self styled free market free thinkers including Davíð Oddsson who became Prime Minister in 1991 and promptly began a radical program of monetary and fiscal fiddling, privatization, tax rate reduction, definition of exclusive use rights in fisheries, abolition of various government funds for aiding unprofitable enterprises and liberalization of currency transfers and capital markets, and writing really really bad Eurovision song contest ditties. He remained Prime Minister for thirteen and a half years but never won a Eurovision)

The present Prime Minister, Geir H. Haarde was secretly cloned in a combined CIA and IMF plot from Oddsson's toe nail clippings and following in the footsteps of his forebear (footsteps, toenail clippings... geddit?... oh do keep up there are precious few jokes around today) He kept the economy trucking on in the same vein up to the point where it is today, and in case you missed the news Iceland is now totally F**ked! It is so FUBARed that the Sigur Ros song starálfur (staring elf) now makes sense and that takes SOME doing!

I bet these modern day vikings who steered the good ship Iceland are now wishing they had gone hunting Bjork pixies trolls instead of going to listen to Mr Friedman. BTW you are now able to buy Iceland (excluding Bjork) on eBay for the princely sum of £1.20 But be warned -this is a real rip off, I would given them no more than £0.75.

Given that Iceland is not that far geographically from Ireland and being a forward looking individual I have made a start practicing for the post-market-melt-down-world. I have :-

(a) started to learn Cantonese because the Chinese won my mortgage in a bet

and

(b) I have drawn up a list of "barter-able" stuff that I may have to use come the time when money ceases to be usable.

This list is of course useless unless someone wants to barter a chicken for 2 days of PHP programming (I would require at least 3 pork chops for any MySql!) I think thats fair but I have a feeling that the best I can hope for would be a couple of carrots and if I am lucky a small potatoe, I shudder to think what Java Dev folk will do!

Google last week brought in "Goggle specs" to stop you sending "unfortunate" emails when you are pished, drunk or otherwise incapacitated. Wonderful idea! Now can we do it for the USian election ? I am not a USian and to be honest I don't give a monkey's chuff who wins. It would appear that to be "leader of the free world" you need loads of $'s and have nice teeth. This oddly os the the way a friend of mine chose the eventual winner of The 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Denman an 8 year old out of Polly Puttens by Presenting and well worth a pound of anyones money at 7-6... i digress... The media is full of this election, you just can't escape it even in rural Ireland! Where was I? Oh yes "Goggle Specs" now if some smart chap could do the same for the election.. before you vote is cast you are asked a couple of questions and then it asks "You are you sure?", "Are you really really really sure?", "Well alright then but no coming complaining after the budget!" and so on, i think the world would perhaps be a better place.

Oh bugger! I didn't win the lottery sometimes I find that Saturdays just suck! Time for bed ...