Monthly Archives: July 2009

Tweets on 2009-07-25

  • Very nearly said "Jelly baby, officer?" to a city warden. #
  • Today we learned that boy cats have nipples too. #
  • Wondering which of these precarious piles to try putting a tea tray on. #
  • Ow, ow, ow, kitten, stop climbing my legs! That hurts! And these were nice tidy jeans until quite recently. #
  • Still writing my speech for tomorrow's Nottingham Pride. #

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Tweets on 2009-07-24

  • @darrenram http://twitpic.com/bbn2a – Windsor? Sang there a few years ago. #
  • More screams from Nottingham Riviera. This time because of the sudden torrents of cold rain. #
  • Heh, my "cheap motel jibe" about Nottm Contemporary's new sign made it into the Evening Post. #
  • http://twitpic.com/bc55w – The beach today, now the downpour is over. #
  • Apparently the nation's media's satellite trucks are parked outside the QMC, anyone know woss goin on? #
  • Ah, radio says there's a recall issue with heart valve surgery patients at the hospital. #
  • Oh dear – electrification of the Great Western line will mean the Midland Mainline is pushed down the queue. #
  • @maggiephilbin Could well be worth a call to the police (on non-urgent number) for exactly that reason. #
  • Oh dear. Played P the Howells Hymn to St Cecilia to show him how ghastly it is. Now have it on brain. #
  • Has already had quite enough of this "wakefulness" for one day, thank you very much. #
  • @darrenram well, a cathedral choir at St George's Chapel 🙂 #
  • Grr! @libdemvoice running like treacle. Makeover can't come too soon! Trying to get open thread out. #

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Tweets on 2009-07-23

  • Crazy fun day at The Vine – take your kids along if they're bored with summer hols already! #
  • Slightly unnerving conducting planning ctte to the sound of children screaming. Didn't think Chairoplanes where so frightening. #
  • Being slightly dismissive of the proposed new signs for Nottingham Contemporary. Looks like a cheap motel sign. #
  • Ooh, someone wants to open a creperie in the West End arcade. Fantastic, what a good idea. #
  • Mmmm, crepes. #
  • RT @hughmcguire: @LibriVox now has a catalog of 2,500 (!) free, public domain audiobooks: http://librivox.org (via @bookoven) #
  • Is that … No, it can't be. The sun? It certainly looks big and hot and yellow… #
  • @thickfurred To express oneself / in seventeen syllables / is very diffic #
  • Level crossing near miss footage. Eeek eeek eek! http://tr.im/tFgT #
  • Iain Dale posts about level crossings – read the comments for the horrible facts about level crossing road accidents 😦 http://tr.im/tFl7 #

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BBC Question Time – LDV open thread, 23 July 2009 #bbcqt #nnbe

Tonight’s Question Time comes from Norwich, and is broadcast shortly after polls close in the Norwich North by-election.

For the Lib Dems, Baroness Shirley Williams enters the fray. She is joined by fellow peeress Baroness Warsi, writer and broadcaster Clive James and from the House of Commons, Geoff Hoon MP and George Galloway MP.

If you’re tuning in, you can join the simultanous online Twitter debate here at #bbcqt, or the LDV debate in the thread below. Meanwhile Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson will be liveblogging events via CoverItLive at his own blog.

Finally, if you want to be amongst the first to hear the Norwich North by-election result, then make sure you follow Nich Starling on Twitter.

Daily View 2×2: 23 July 2009

Good morning. You join us here on LDV as we wish happy birthday to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Foot, and as the nation of Egypt and the Rastafarians commemorate the birth of Haile Selassie.

It’s also polling day in Norwich North. Will April Pond become the 64th Lib Dem MP? Will we make our second by-election gain in the 2005 Parliament? Find out first on twitter – as the blogosphere’s reporter on the spot Nich Starling will report, live from the Norfolk Showground.

Two big news stories

Kingsnorth tactics criticised
The Guardian reports the report into police behaviour at the environmental protests earlier in the year at Kingsnorth, with Lib Dem MP David Howarth quoted:

This is yet another example of the disproportionate use of stop and search, and shows how, even on the report’s own narrow terms, this tactic is totally counterproductive.

Battle to save Britain’s wind industry
The Independent leads with a story of a coalition of trades unionists and green campaigners attempting to save Britain’s only major wind turbine plant, on the Isle of Wight.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This closure exposes the hollow truth of Labour’s climate change strategy.”

Rebuilding a stable green economy, presumably including green collar jobs in the wind turbine industry, is the first of the major strands of Nick Clegg’s Fresh Start.

Two must-read blog posts

What’s the point of FPC? Ask Nick Clegg!

A frustrated Lindy Loo reveals Nick Clegg has gone a little off-message in his presentation of the pre-manifesto. Another big bust up due at conference?

Mark Reckons chats to Brenda Barbara Tucker

Not the character from the Archers, but a staunch anti-war protester currently living in Parliament Square:

She explained that as far as she is concerned, the entire political system has failed. She thinks that we are led by war criminals and all who support this system are also complicit. She said that parliament does not have legitimacy and that the whipping system is anti-democratic. Eventually she hopes that enough people will decide to opt out of the system and then things will have to change.

Tweets on 2009-07-22

  • Goodness. Miss England is an Olympic-class athlete, and one of the runners up, Miss Leeds is a lance-corporal. http://tr.im/tkfQ #
  • Stuck on the brain today: one of the themes from the excellent Popcap game Plants vs Zombies. #
  • "The zombies… are coming!" In other news, off to tram meeting. #
  • Tonight I have been ringing the bells of Southwell Minster, which was a lovely night out. #
  • Supermarket has "back to school" display – it's the first day of the hols for most! #
  • Scrabbly kitten goes silent. Sudden jabbing pain in my leg as he climbs onto my lap, all made ok again as he falls asleep purring #
  • #lameclaimtofame I still have my Blue Peter badge, honestly earned, and carefully stored. #

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Tweets on 2009-07-21

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Tiny things I hate about Outlook Web Access

Excuse this cathartic rant about the horror that is the Outlook Web Access user interface.

But there are two tiny things that get in the bloody way every time I fire it up and just drive me crackers.

The first is the box of recently / frequently used email addresses. It has a scroll bar. At the top and bottom, arrows, a little box showing how far down you are, and the space around the little box. Normally with such technology the top and bottom arrows let you scroll up line by line, and the space around the box lets you scroll through the data page by page. But with OWA, the two different places to click do exactly the same thing. Clicking in the space around the box moves the data down line by line. Clicking on the arrows moves the data down line by line. IT SHOULDN’T BE LIKE THAT!!!

Two of the people I email most frequently are called Susan, and are close to the bottom of the list. So EVERY DAY I have to scroll through the email box to find their details, and every day it irks me that the box just doesn’t work properly.

The second thing — oooh, how it irks! This is not a problem when using it from home and Chrome, but using it on Outlook at work where that’s the only browser choice it comes up on a daily basis. I’m the sort of web user who always deliberately has dozens of tabs or browser windows open at once. There are 10 at the top of this page as I type and another three in the computer one foot to the left.

If you go to the menu, File > new says that if you press Ctrl-N you get a new window. A new browser window full of browsery goodness where you can go and look at other websites.

So, frequently, I do precisely that. I press Ctrl-N. And do I get a new browser window? Do I buggery. I get a new blank email. I didn’t want a new blank email, I wanted a new browser window, so when the keyboard short cut fails me, I have to go back into the menu to get the new browser window I actually wanted and needed. And there, smugly smirking at me, is the same little line of text that erroneously tells you that the short-cut for a new browser window is Ctrl-N. IT LIES!

Grrrr.