"Abstinence makes the church grow fondlers"
— placard of a protester against the Nadine Dorries bill (photographed in the Guardian)
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart,…
"Luck is probability taken personally"
— Anon
I wonder whether anybody was as astonished as I was with the Guardian’s revelation this morning that rich people were less likely to have taken part in the summer riots? But it must be true - they have a map to prove it.
I have been lucky enough to obtain a preview of their next revealing map (above).
Guardian knot
This is the process for placing a death notice in The Guardian:
- spend 15-20 mins scratting round their website. Find nothing except 2 email addresses that look vaguely relevant (obituaries@, classified.advertising@)
- write to the email addresses
- when they reply, discover that actually you need a different address altogether: announcements@guardian.co.uk
- email your copy
- when you get an email response, phone a charming but slightly disorganised man as he grinds the details through a desperately slow online system. Oh, and they can’t do the accent in née…
This is the process for placing a death notice in The Telegraph:
- go to any half-relevant page & click the link
- fill in the form
- … er, that’s it.
Just how desperately does The Guardian not want several hundred £s? Nobody in need of this service is going to be having a good week…
µ
Teaching & learning
“Are you offering to teach me something?”
“Teach? No,” said Granny. “Ain’t got the patience for teaching. But I might let you learn.”
— Terry Pratchett, Maskerade
Quote flipper: now in my lab
Those of us who labour over hot code know that one of the most tedious tasks is to pick over a string converting ” to ’ (or vice versa).
I got so fed up with it that I built a little something to automate the task. Help yourself
"Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to."
— Terry Pratchett, Snuff
"You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage."
— Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
"this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to"
— Ashleigh Brilliant b1933
