Gizzusajob!

It can’t be a lot of fun, working for a recruitment agency. However, it says very little for their chances of success pushing candidates if they can’t recruit decent staff themselves. I am on the mailing list of a company called JAM and they send me the most appalling emails. I received two in two days, and I’m now compelled to share them:

Here at JAM we specialise heavily within our market sector and have a second to none standard on candidate approaching us at all times. – Mark Davies

I’m not really sure what Mark is trying to say. Jamie, on the other hand, needs to get an emailer with a speelchecker:

Bryan is a widely experianced Mechanical Design Engineer, with vast experiance in the Defence and Aerospace sectors. – Jamie Wise

Gavin is a Chartered Engineer with extensive experiance in the lift industry, who is looking for a fresh challenge. I’m not sure if you have vacancy’s in his area, but hope he can be of use. If not just drag in the trash. – Jamie Wise

Poor Gavin, dragged into the trash. The next I have to quote in its entirety:

Hi there ive come across candidate 35890 whom is seeking a opportunity UK Wide. He has an in-depth electronics knowledge (technical level)

He has implemented the latest RoHS and WEEE standards to a number of companies and does not mind getting his hands dirty.

After speaking to him on a number of occasion about possible opportunity’s at your organisation he was immediately interested in getting to know more.- Imran Rafiq

I actually complained to the company about that one, pointing out to them that it was less than productive. I received no reply. I’d like to be able to tell the prospective candidates how they are being advertised, but there is obviously no way to get in touch with them.

Perhaps it’s a cunning ploy to make them stand out from the crowd? Nah.

An Entry About Coding

A first for this blog! I really like the new Chart API announced by Google which lets you do this:

simply by coding up a URL with parameters. Insert it as an image, and Google will send back the chart in PNG format. That pie was made with the following ingredients:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=p
&chs=300×120
&chf=bg,s,fff2cc
&chtt=Willingham+Elections+2007
&chd=t:66,16,9,7,2
&chl=Lazy+Bastards|Brian+Burling|Pat+Daniels|Leslie+Gelling|Nicola+Andrews
&chco=00c000,0000c0,c0c0c0,c0c000,c00000

You are limited to 50,000 hits a day, so I think I’ll be safe. I took the data from this image, which I originally made in Excel and captured, etc.

Democracy Inaction 2007

Round-Up Robin

I’ve been very lax. Busy, but that’s no excuse. My excuse is that I wanted to do pictorial fancy reportage of stuff, but that is too burdensome and so to catch up all in one requires a Christmas Round Robin style holiday bragging session, but at least the slideshow is optional.

A promise to take Wen’s parents to catch the Eurostar ended up with us spending the weekend in Paris.

Then we continued at midsummer by going to Glastonbury. We even bought a gas stove and a little kettle. You may recall that it rained. There was also mud. If we can get tickets, and can find some travelling companions, we shall probably go again next year.

At the end of July, we went to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore. It was hot, humid and fabulous.

Then for our Silver Wedding Anniversary (isn’t that something old people have? Don’t I remember my parents’?), Alf & Anne organised a Champagne Tasting Weekend in Reims. We were promised a weekend drinking “more champagne than you’ve ever drunk in your life”. We thought that would be a tall order for Anne, but I think that we managed – certainly more kinds of champage.

Marquee Moving


Andrew Lansley MP was visiting a neighbour of ours, so they put a marquee up on the lawn.

Later they decided to have the reception indoors, because of the wind – a good decision, as the marquee got away!



 


The tree stopped it hitting any buildings. And after everyone (un-)pitched in (including the MP), it was made safe. Only the tree was damaged.

There was an official photographer watching us take it down (he didn’t help). Maybe his pictures will turn up in the Cambridge Evening News, if nothing else happens today.

Resistance:Fall of Church

At first it made me angry, both at the Church of England for complaining and the BBC for running the story without checking any of the facts:

– the Bishop says “hundreds of people are gunned down in the cathedral”
You shoot aliens. Most of them are giant scorpion-like leapers. You don’t even shoot hundreds of them.

– “gun culture” is being promoted to “kids”
The game has a 15 certificate. No kids allowed.

– Sony didn’t ask permission
To use a medieval building? I don’t think the architect would mind.

– “a virtual cathedral – identical to Manchester Cathedral”
Except for half the tower being missing, a big hole in the back wall, it being used as a field hospital and being infested by aliens.

– constant reference to Sony as the creator of the game
Resistance: Fall of Man was written by Insomniac Games in Burbank, California. It’s amazing enough that they even know there is a cathedral in Manchester.

Then add to that a big helping of hypocrisy when it appeared that the church just wanted money – “a substantial donation – otherwise it will consider legal action.” Turn the other cheek, eh?

Now it amuses me. I suppose, if you have a big invisible friend whispering in your ear, it is very easy to get confused between real life and saving the world from an alien invasion in an alternative 1950s version of England.

Disclosure: I have a PS3 and a copy of the game. I gave the cathedral setting (maybe 10 minutes in 6 or 7 hours of play) less thought than I did the bus depot in York. Until now.

ParcelFarce

I order stuff off the interweb all the time. If it fits through the letterbox – DVDs, CDs, games – then I get it sent home. Everything else I have delivered to work and generally that used to work out fine. Almost all my Christmas shopping last year was subcontracted by Santa via the office.

Since we moved a little closer to Cambridge from the wild fenlands, however, the delivery times have changed. So a “signed-for” ParcelForce package which somebody has to be in to receive obviously goes to work. The address is “Oakington Business Park”, so there is a clue there. They try to deliver it at 8:05 in the morning. They leave a card: “we will attempt delivery tomorrow”. I bet they wouldn’t deliver at home at 8-oh-bloody-5.

I suspected it was for me, so I came in an hour early (what businesses start at 8:00am? Milkmen? Certainly not postmen.) and they were here again at exactly the same time. Why would you do that? (I know, as a software engineer, I always see if it happens again, but I get more than 2 attempts before I give up.)

I suppose it worked. I got the parcel.

Generalize

So, the man on the radio was probably nervous. (Who wouldn’t be, interviewed on “Today” on Radio 4, which by necessity means you’ve been untimely ripped from your bed.) It did sound like something he’d rehearsed, but probably not something he’d listened to. Still, I’d like to think he wishes he hadn’t said it now:

“It’s always wrong to generalize about anything.”

Thanks to the power of the BBC’s Listen Again, I have discovered that it was Grant Hearne, Chief Executive of Travelodge talking about private equity financing of businesses.

Yesterday I couldn’t even spell plummer..


Tool and Pipe
Originally uploaded by DerekL.

..today I are one.

It started when Robyn noticed something growing on her bathroom ceiling. Closer inspection revealed an excessive amount of damp.

Up into the loft I went, and the insulation under the cold pipe to the shower was completely wet through, as was the plasterboard ceiling. I couldn’t see anything on the pipe though, so I mopped up.

Next day, I looked again, and this time I did notice water leaking from the end of the lagging. When I took more lagging off I could see a very slow drip from much further down the pipe – it had been running along the lagging before escaping. I tried some very old (too old in fact) pipe sealing goo stuff. It didn’t stick so I put a tin under the drip and asked my Dad for advice. He told me of the magic of push-fit connectors and pipe-cutters.

The next day I checked again. The sandpapering I did to the pipe to make the goo work had obviously made the hole bigger, and the tin was full. Now I could see a very fine spray. This time I turned the water off.


Repaired
Originally uploaded by DerekL.

I thought I’d go to the newly opened Screwfix Trade Counter, but I was a week early. I had to go to Plumbase across the road where the cutter was £20 (but “Made in England”). When I got home I had fixed it in 10 minutes. Magic. (It would have been 5 minutes, but when I first cut the pipe I discovered that I hadn’t quite turned the water completely off, and had to scramble like a loon back across the loft to the tap.)