barryharris.me.uk

Another small site update

barry — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:45:33 +0000

Captain CPS-X kindly did a new logo for the site so I have replaced the old one with a nice snazzy new one! Thanks Cap.

Small Site Update

barry — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:17:52 +0000

I updated the site CSS a bit, mainly to support centring the site now that higher resolutions are more common. I had to update some of the XHTML output as well to fix some issues caused by the new CSS but the result is pretty good.

I've tested in Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7. I even tested in an old version of Mozilla (1.7) I have around and it looked fine in that too, surprisingly!

Site Updates

barry — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:04:07 +0000

Finished a site tidy-up which was long overdue! Most of it was just house-keeping (such as fixing the XHTML validation) and fixing some issues with the captcha routines.

One thing that is now working though is the search function. I finally got around to writing it - it currently searches in articles, comments, and galleries for whatever you ask it to look for and then highlights your criteria in yellow when you view the results. Makes a nice little addition to the site and now it's getting quite big it should prove useful.

I also tidied the Archives at the side as they were getting a bit long - now it shows only one year in full, saving quite a bit of screen space.

The only other new thing is that the site now supports playing FLV and SWF files. Currently, this is only used in the private area (you didn't know about that? - this site does much more than at first glance!), but I might have uses for it in the future.

Site Back Online

barry — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:41:15 +0000

Site is back online. My host upgraded the server which they told me about and it shouldn't have caused a problem. What they neglected to tell me was that they were changing my dedicated IP. I've updated the DNS records and it appears to be propagating quite quickly!

Evie Mae

barry — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:29:14 +0000

Well, little Evie has finally arrived. She was born last Wednesday and was two weeks late and weighed in at a very healthy 10 pounds, 2 ounces. Gemma did amazingly well to deliver naturally and mother and baby are both fine and well. Evie is a joy and very good - although the waking up at night is taking some getting used to!

Obviously, things will slow down here for a while now but I will still do the odd bit here and there.

Somewhat of a surprise

barry — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:34:09 +0000

Well, I'm amazed. In amongst all the crap in my inbox something rather funny was lurking that I just had to share.....

Oh, I'm not a Chelsea fan either, my old emulation nick Treble Winner should give my team away - just in case it doesn't, then this will.

Normal Service Resumed

barry — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 21:07:08 +0000

Site is now backup after the weekend's problems. Hopefully that should be an end to any down-time.

Where do my taxes go?

barry — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 18:52:50 +0000

Warning, this is going to be a serious rant, so if you are of a nervous disposition, look away now! Although, if you are thinking about moving to the borough of Wigan then you may just want to read on....

Our story begins in the council borough of Wigan. Now I must have done something seriously wrong in a past-life for us to have landed in such a cesspit. My partner and I have had the misfortune to require the services of the council (specifically Wigan and Leigh Housing) and Greater Manchester Police.

We will start with the worst of the lot, Wigan and Leigh Housing. We, and numerous of our (mostly elderly) neighbours have had an ongoing nuisance neighbour case for the past 18 months. Now there are literally dozens of incidents of anti-social behaviour in this time from this council tenant. I won't go into them all now but the more serious incidents involve;

The neighbour pouring paint into the sunroof of our car overnight, causing damage to the paintwork and the interior.
Extremely threatening behaviour to my partner which was witnessed by our 2 year old girl
Verbal assault of my family and other neighbours' families by the neighbour and her son.
Numerous accounts of domestic violence and late night disturbances fuelled by alcohol and drugs.
Numerous police visits/raids looking for drugs, domestic violence suspects, breach of probation conditions, etc.
Eggs being thrown at our windows
Various abuse from the neighbours son involving throwing rubbish onto our property and various insults the likes of which should not be coming from a child under 10

Naturally when this sort of thing happens you turn to the authorities. You pay your taxes and you expect that they are put to good use. You'd think so wouldn't you? Unfortunately it seems that they are only utilised to employ bureaucrats whose only talent seems to be that they are good at getting paid for doing very little.

The bureaucrat dealing with this case keeps coming up with new ways to do nothing. We were previously told that one more incident and we would finally see some action in the case. Since then numerous incidents have been reported, including the latest one involving the aforementioned criminal damage to our car. So what did the pen pushers do now? What they always do. Invent some more procedures to fob decent people off some more so they can return to their slumber. They spout the same spiel over and over and it has gotten frankly very tiresome.

The biggest betrayal of all is the fact that we are constantly mislead. As well as the fact that we were told that one more incident and there would be action, we were also told that we were the only people reporting such incidents. After speaking with our neighbours it seems that we are one of six households who have been reporting incidents for well over twelve months. How can the pen pushers get away with such lying (I was looking for a different word but then I decided a spade is a spade afterall).

This article is long enough, the police can wait for their turn but they are as bad as the other red-tape slackers.

So, if you ever wonder where your taxes go - they are spent employing lazy pen pushers who are very good at turning up to work and getting away with doing nothing. Nice easy life for the select few isn't it? The rest of us will carry on being tormented due to their laziness.

Engaged

barry — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:41:06 +0000

Greetings all. Just a quick post to announce my engagement to a wonderful woman. Got engaged to Gemma last week in Venice and I couldn't be happier.