Monthly Archives: May 2009
Coding Principles for Creative Types
Members of the creative side of web design and search engine optimisation tend to steer clear of ‘coding’, leaving it to people with beards. Creative Types don’t want to waste time entering, presumably, ones and zeros into a website’s code (wherever that is). But as many Creative Types find out sooner or later, it is good to get a basic grounding in coding. What follows is a few of the most important points, enough at least to get you through a drunken conversation with a ‘Coder’.
The Coder and the Creative Type
You must first realise that the Coder believes a Creative Type simply draws a pretty picture or creates a striking logo, then writes some bollocks to go with it. The Creative Type must reassure the Coder that this is not the case. Even though it quite clearly is.
It is beneficial then to go over a few key terms used with dizzying frequency by the Coder. An ASP is a kind of digital ‘snake’ which slithers over the internet searching for Met-her Date-her (sometimes called Meta data). Met-her Date-hers are people who use dating websites. Dating websites are of course what the internet was primarily invented for by the US military, way back in 1959.
OK, so these ‘snakes’ are really just pieces of code – but sometimes they get attacked by ‘spiders’, who plant ‘viruses’ in the ‘snakes’. With me so far? OK so these spiders and viruses are really bad news, but don’t worry – there is a solution. As any Coder worth his beard will tell you, spiders can be wiped off the infected code by using AJAX cream cleaner. AJAX cream cleaner is popular among many Coders, although some protest that JAVA is better, as evidenced by many pub glassings.
Sometimes a digital ‘spider’ crawls deep into a websites code and finds a tin of SPAM suspended at the centre. If the spider is allowed to digest the SPAM it can get bloated, increasing its bandwidth, which in turn causes it to lose four legs and grow a horses head. A Coder would call this a Trojan Horse Virus, which are very difficult to get out of the website code, primarily because of their ridiculous SPAM fattened size. An old school Creative Type will hurriedly draw a pretty picture of a Magic Knight, write some bollocks to go with it, and hand this expectantly to the Coder in the vain belief that the Knight will slay the nasty Trojan Horse Virus.
World Beard and Moustache Championships – need I say more?
Hurry!!! There are only 719 days left to go before the next World Beard and Moustache Championships. I can hear the cires of anguish echoing around the empty… beard halls, or wherever these sort of events are held; “Why so long! I need my fill of hefty beard action! Other generic beard yearning related comments…”
That is mainly because the WBMC was recently held in Anchorage, Alaska with some rather interesting consequences. One of the highlights being when judge Frank Gershman mixed up an entry, forcing a partial beard unsnooded into the full beard catagory! Oh, BTW – I just made that up, because there were no highlights!
Imagine a room with the most banal, tankard-swilling, jig-dancing, wannabe-19th-century-prospectors and now throw in the fact that they have travelled across the globe to judge each others facial hair. Here are some of the contestants:
These contestants are Austrian and German respectively and it is worth mentioning that the Austrian snapped up the first place, Chin and Cheek Beard Freestyle title in the 2004 German international championships; mainly just to draw attention to the fact someone actually created that classification.
The controversy surrounding this years results was that the Germans were knocked off their lofty beard pedestal by the USA, the US raking in 10 world beard champions. This has been caused for much frivolity and back-slapping stateside through Beard Team USA. That’s right… Beard Team USA.
Beard Team USA are an official organisation with a following across the US and even their own website. However they don’t have the same distinguished delusional air as their European brothers in face-pubes and many look like they should be on a website of a different sort, probably one dealing with listings for registered sex offenders – although this is purely speculative.
I certainly wouldn’t wish to incur the wrath of Beard Team USA only to wake up one morning being strategically shaved by a gaggle of wispy faced lunatics screaching, “He has no beard and therefore we are the winners!” Or something equally deranged.
The overall champion was named as David ‘Beard-Face’ Traver having styled his beard to resemble an Alaska snowshoe.
As we can see the beard is of epic proportions and is in fact styled like a snow shoe. There were protestations from the Eurotrash beard-havers, stating that due to the competition being hosted on US soil, there was a certain amount of favouratism in the judging.
A Real Pain In The Arse
Rome does not have the best track record for hosting football matches and their security services are not shy. They employ a policy of strike first then strike again later instead of asking questions. If you have not had a unit of Italian riot police doing a carefully choreographed ho-down on your skull then you are not a true football fan.
Ouch, my brains!
The greatly anticipated Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United is being held in Rome, leading to concerns regarding the behaviour of the police and fans alike.
Where we English generally express our disdain for one another’s choice of footbal team by a good old Queensbury rules dust up and the occasional stoving in of someone’s head with the brick, the Italians have taken it one step further. With typical Italian zest they have developed a culture of stabbing people in the arse.
The culture of arse- stabbing is believed to have developed from a culture of medievel dueling where it was thought to be skillful to slash your opponent on the posterior.It is more realistic that the Rennaissance hooligans are merely looking to inflict the highest level of non-life threatening injuries on their foe.
It is also likely that the culture spread from Turkish prisons. Called Turkish revenge, the aggreived would shank his victim repeatedy in the buttocks as anything above the waist was considered attempted murder. Instead of complaints procedures they had arse-stabbing and in place of policy reviews they put arse-stabbing.
In British prisons inmates are constantly slashing each other accross their bottoms. A razor is removed from its casing then melted into the plastic handle of a tooth brush. The nice convict will then proceed to slash his vitcim across both cheeks, which takes ages to heal as everytime the slashee sits down, the wound reopens.
So it is not necessarily an Italian culture, more of an intrinsic human compulsion to stab each other in the arse. As Descartes once said, “I stab people in the arse therefore I am.” I guess it is one of the more comic places to stab someone if there is such a thing, however it is especially popular in Rome.
Arse-stabbing experts believe that the culture has developed as it is particularly humiliating for the victim and is less likely to be life threatening. The object is not to murder but to stab in the arse. Many English football fans have experienced the bitter taste of a stabbed arse.
Huzzah for Cameron, the lesser of two Weables
Huzzah! Pip-pip and a rolicking, trolloping good time for all!
David Cameron is plastered over the news once more pledging to bring power back to the people. Our democratic rights are once more safe in the hands of the true conservatives – well, at least we know where we stand.
With the current cabinet committing mass political suicide, like lemmings dropping off the political cliff-face, it will not be long before the Bullingdon Dining Club have their feet well and truly under the table.
Borris Johnson, the mayor of London, was part of the Bullingdon Dining Club at Oxford, where common practice was to book a party at a restaurant under a false name, smash it up then throw money at the aggreived owner – basically saying ‘we are rich and we do what we like’.
Interesting proving ground for Cameron’s vision of returning the power to the people. His proposed “radical redistribution of power”, comes with a great deal of ‘considerations’ and ambiguous rhetoric – in fact it seems to be devoid of all concrete policies and initiatives.
The recent conservative mailout that every registered voter received came with a familiar slogan on it – ‘time for change’. Hmmm where have we heard that before. Cameron seems to aligning himself with Obama in a rather slippery fashion, hoping that no-one notices that he is less like Obama than Gordon Brown is Bill Clinton.
It would be a miracle if the Conservatives don’t get elected at the next election due to the symphony of idiocy displayed by the current government, however one cannot help but feel the Bullingdon Dining Club moto of ‘we’re rich and we do what we like’ might come back to haunt us all.
Cameron seems to be taking the strategy of pointing out all the faults with the current government and leaving his policies very vague – whilst saying it’s time for change.
Historically the two party political system has swung from left to right, precisely because one party smashes things to pieces so badly that we forget how bad the predecessors were, so vote them in again.
With such dismal options with the main parties, voters are bieng increasingly pushed to the fringes, to the more sinister side of the political spectrum.
