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Author: Richy B.

Follow me on Mastodon at @rbairwell@mastodon.org.uk or just the posts on this blog by following @richyb@blog.rac.me.uk .

Personal: Why the blogging absence?

[H4xoor Roolz]So why have I been away from the blogging world for a week? (and, nope, the image to this post – which you CAN click on to enlarge – has got nothing to do with this post).

A combination of things really. For those of you who don’t know me too well, apart from working as a search engine optimiser, I also run my own small business (which does make a profit, but not enough to cover my mortgage and other large bills: when I was “unemployed” I was managing off the income from my small business and the paltry £42.70 income support I was getting managed to keep me going for around 6 months) and I’m a bit of a media personality (hey, let’s face it, not many people have met me and been able to forget moi 😀 ). I’ve been in several news stand magazines, newspapers, on local radio, across the internet and on national television to name just a few sources that I’m aware of – but last Thursday a picture was published in a newspaper (which I won’t name here) that I wasn’t aware even existed. It showed somebody who I had met only once in my live, one person I know really well and a number of other people who I don’t believe I’ve ever met. I therefore thought it might be a bit prudent to keep a low profile for a few days (and, no, I won’t discuss the photo or anything)…

Guess That Movie: XXXI: The Fifth Element

[Guess That Movie Image 31]Sorry for the long delay between Kymberlie R. McGuire correctly recognising that round 30 was of Cast Away [Order from Amazon.co.uk] (it showed Tom Hanks in the water and LD didn’t disappoint me by guessing at “The Truman Show” [Order from Amazon.co.uk] : I did intentionally try and get the image as close to that of near the end of that Jim Carrey movie, but the colour of the sky and lack of boat was the big give away). I don’t know if it was the additional clue of “Meg Ryan was NOT in this movie” that helped Kymberlie correctly guess it (as Meg and Tom have been in Sleepless in Seattle [Order from Amazon.co.uk] , You’ve Got Mail [Order from Amazon.co.uk] AND Joe Versus the Volcano together).

I’ll update the scores soon (probably after this round), but see if you can recognise which movie this image is from. It shouldn’t be too hard, but if you are getting near the ripe old age of 28 then it might be a bit too hard and recent for you grandma 😉

But for now, I’ll be seeing you! (and, yep, I am entitled to say that 🙂 )

A: The Fifth Element [Order from Amazon.co.uk] . Correctly guessed by Kymberlie R. McGuire

Personal: Media Attention

Please note: further to the photograph of my family that was published in the media on Thursday, I have no comment to make.

All media correspondence regarding myself or Beebware MUST be directed to the press department of Beebware International whose contact details can be found on the main Beebware site. Any requests for further television or media interviews will be ignored unless they are sent, in writing, to the Beebware Press department. Telephone calls WILL be ignored.

(everybody else who is wonder ‘what on earth?’: don’t worry about it, normal blogging will be resumed shortly)

Snippet: Normal Service

*snippet* Yeah, I know – there hasn’t been much original content (bar the Guess That Movie competition) as of late. I’ve been extremely tired lately (last Friday/Saturday I would guess I was only operating at 40-50% efficiency, I’m now back up to around 90-95%) and when I have been awake and able to concentrate, I’ve been working on a number of things I’ve got on the back burner. As well as my “personal” websites (“Guess That Movie” – has still got to be launched as a separate site, another 1 has got a redesign pending and the third/main site needs fixing in some aspects and new features adding), I’ve had to bring my self up to speed with some of the technologies we are using at work. My big mouth doesn’t help in this aspect – “oh boss, what do you think of the idea of perhaps offering feature X or somehow combining Y and Z?” and him replying “make it so” (paraphrasing).

Of course, we could do it all manually – but if it takes us an hour to “activate” each new feature everytime and they do take off, then the time spent planning and spec’ing everything now is well spent. But to get it to work “nicely”, it’s all got to be integrated with our current systems: which I’m still learning about (it doesn’t help with a couple of them being “closed-sourced commercial” systems with very little techy documentation and I only have access to the live servers: hence no ‘learn by experimenting’ option!).

Hopefully by the weekend, I’ll be back to my normal blogging self: I’ve still got this weeks weekly wrapup to do (which is particularly relevant to me lately – but you’ll see what I mean when I do it).

Ciao!

Joke: God and behavioural patterns

[God]God looked at earth and wanted to know what kind of behaviour that was going on. He decided to send an angel down to Earth to check it out. So he called one of His angels and sent the angel to Earth for a time.

When he returned, he told God, “Yes, it is bad on Earth; 95% are misbehaving and 5% are not.”

God thought for a moment and said, “Maybe I had better send down a second angel to get another opinion.” So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time too.

When the angel returned he went to God and said, “Yes, it’s true-the Earth is in decline; 95% are misbehaving and 5% are being good.”

God was not pleased. So He decided to E-mail the 5% that were good, because He wanted to encourage them. Give them a little something to help them keep going. Do you know what that E-mail said?