Rob's Blog

Merry Christmas!
25th Dec 2006 17:12

Merry Christmas everyone! We're having a lovely day in Somerset! There's some photos in the photo pages.

The usability of road signs
22nd Dec 2006 14:12

It's become evident that functionality and usability testing is taking over my life. I started thinking about road signs way too much when I was driving back from Hazels earlier this week. I realised that there's a few road signs that really grind my gears... I truly have reached new heights of sadness.

Permanent 'queues likely' signs

These signs are actually saying: “You're stuck in a traffic jam right? Ha. Yeah. Well, we knew that was going to happen. The reason is that we can't be bothered to fix the road system ahead”. I genuinely hear Nelson's “ha ha!” in my head every time I see one.

Temporary 'fog' signs

The fog was really bad driving back to Somerset. I've never seen fog like it. But why on earth do we need signs on the M25 every single mile telling us in big flashing letters that it's foggy? It was bloody obvious that it was foggy, and those signs are no more necessary than signs saying 'hey, did you notice it's dark outside?'. They're big flashy distracting signs that seem to serve no true purpose.

Speed camera signs without speed limits below them

I've only seen a couple of speed camera signs that do have the speed limit posted below them. They're brilliant. But all other speed camera signs suck. Whenever I see a speed camera sign that doesn't have the speed limit posted directly alongside it I spend the next 20 seconds checking my speed, checking the road for speed limit signs, checking the speed of all the cars around me, looking for the camera, wondering when the last sign I saw was... if there's one thing you don't want to do on the road it's to make somebody think too much. Not including the speed limit right next to speed camera signs is just plain silly.

Penis profiling
15th Dec 2006 22:12

In the car on the way back from Taekwondo (no fainting today) I had an epiphany. There's two types of email spammers in the world. The first kind are 'legitimate spammers'. They're the kind of junk mailings that you could unsubscribe from if you realized it. They're newsletters that originate from legitimate companies that you accidentally told you didn't mind receiving mailings from six times a day. The other category are 'penis spammers'. This kind of junk mail appears to originate from a group of people that have somehow succeeded in broadly grouping every man, woman and child in the world into one of 6 categories relating to the male phallus:

1. your penis is too floppy
2. your penis is too small
3. you think being a stockbroker will make you rich and compensate for your small penis
4. you think laundering money will make you rich and compensate for your small penis
5. you think buying a fake Rolex will compensate for your small penis
6. you don't mind forwarding all of your friends email addresses to a marketing company through fear of invoking a curse which means your penis will fall off or never get used

I'm interested in how accurate spam profiling is. My gut guess is that it's probably about as accurate as a sniper with a shotgun... ... but maybe there's something too it. I mean... I've only really got my own spam experiences to go on. And I am, after all, a bloke. I also run a business. So perhaps it's only natural that all of my spam is related to making money and emphasizing the size of my penis. In a strange way it actually seems as though I've been quite well profiled. Do I just happen to fit into a universal spam mold? Or have I been well profiled? The question I really want answered is: do other people get a different collection of spam? Do the unemployed get constant offers of work? Do the young women get constant offers of cheap boob jobs? Do the single mums get constant offers from dating companies? I hope it's one of those two. I hope I either happen to fit into the universal mold or I've been well profiled. Because the only other option is that I've started to become so influenced by spam that I've actually started to believe the lifestyle that it's offering. Does, urm, does my penis look small in this..?

Felled by Coffee
15th Dec 2006 17:12

One thing has become apparent over the past 3 months: my choice in company name has been greatly approved of my the web design community. I've had numerous emails from people complimenting me on my choice of name, and a quick Google search proves that 'Fuelled on Coffee Limited' has been approved of by English, French, German and Portuguese speakers alike as a gosh darn good choice of name. (I think my gran disagrees, but she's definitely in the minority). The thing is, it's not just a gimmick, I really do drink a lot of coffee. Really. Loads. I'm approaching 3 weeks without a cigarette, and I've definitely increased the caffeine by way of compensation. This week, I definitely drank too much coffee. On Tuesday I drank so much caffeinated joy during the day that I very nearly fainted of dehydration in the evening. I underestimated how little water I'd drunk to compensate before I went to Taekwando, and actually had to go and sit down to stop myself from fainting. I was literally felled by coffee. It didn't exactly help to reinforce the hard-as-nails persona that I was trying to go with...

Beating up children
06th Dec 2006 18:12

Like all things in life, blogging is considerably harder when you're up against tough competition. There was a time when my blogging competition was fairly relaxed. Now I'm competing with people like Jonny fighting Bears in Laos. I mean... that's quite a tough precedent that's been set. Such exciting things just don't happen in the Somerset countryside. That said, I did beat up a kid last night. And he was probably both bigger and more aptly trained in the martial arts than Jonny's bear.

I've taken up Taekwondo, or TKD as all the cool kids call it. For the Tekken fans you'll probably know it better as “Hworang” or “Baek” style. Lots of kicks and jumps and making yourself dizzy whilst leaving yourself it stupidly vulnerable positions. Excellent stuff.

I have to give credit to any form of exercise that has such conflicting approaches to physical contact: As a warm up we 'play fight' no contact. Just throw lots of punches and kicks. Well, that's easy enough. As a cool down the instructions were “now punch your partner 20 times in the stomach as hard as they can take it”. I kid you not. Except my partner was indeed a kid of about 14 (although very good at TKD), so I did feel a certain amount of guilt when he was nursing his ribs later.

Smoking
03rd Dec 2006 23:12

Two smoking barrels For Ben's stag do we dressed in our finest country gentleman attire and went clay pigeon shooting. Shotguns are very loud, very inaccurate, and every bit as fun to fire as I'd have imagined. Hitting a rather impressive 26 out of 30 has proved that I'm every bit as ruthless with a real shotgun as I am in Halo. You have been warned. 8 smoking cigars Post shoot we went to a pub and all lit a cigar in Ben's honor. Very manly we thought. Also very smoky. (I maintain that two puffs on a cigar doesn't count as smoking!). We literally filled the pub with smoke requiring the locals open the doors and windows and general look at us with disdain. The fact that Ben was wearing snake skin trousers and a reindeer hat had already resulted in us getting noticed. The guy from Smokey You remember that highly popular song “Living next door to Alice?” covered by Roy Chubby Brown as “Who the f**k is Alice?”. I got chatting to a bloke in the pub who reliably informed me that life wasn't fair. The reason that life isn't fair is that he was in Smokey, the band that sang the original version. He's now drinking alone in a pub in Sawbridgeworth rather than being famous. So life isn't fair. I had no reason to doubt him... but having Googled Smokey I'm not so sure he wasn't pulling my leg. Smoking tires Unfortunately, whilst chatting to the guy from Smokey in a smoke filled pub after the whole “Lock stock and two smoking barrels” experience someone forgot to do a head count. So I had a few chilled pints with the locals whilst the two cars conferred, concluded they had indeed forgotten me, and did a u-turn at the next motorway junction to come and pick me back up. ... I definitely chose the wrong week to stop smoking!