Archive for January, 2013

The sixth project in your Competent Communicator module is all about vocal variety. So I decided to do a retelling of an old classic, the one about the man who prays to god to save him from the flood, then goes on to ignore all the help god sends, expecting a miracle instead.

This worked well for the project as it allowed me to use a quiet slow voice when the man is praying, and a fast loud voice when his would-be rescuers are trying to convincing him to come to safety.

While I personally thought I was well beaten by one of our Distinguished Toastmasters, who gave a brilliant speech about how he was trying to play the blues harp (also known as a harmonica to those outside the trade, so I’m told), the voting went my way and I ended up adding another Best Speaker ribbon to my collection.

Turns out they’ve added two new things to Twister – a hands on the air result, and a “twister’s choice” result. It’s not like when we were young…

For the fifth year in a row, there was only one place to be to properly ring in the new year. We had cocktails, sausage roles and Twister!

Recently, some of the great people got together at Sky Bet and auctioned off their hand made Christmas decorations – Princess Leia and Darth Vader sock snowmen – to raise money for the Humanist Action Group’s homeless programme. Brilliant idea!

Last week, we tried to get Elina’s bank account sorted out. When she originally set up the account with Lloyds TSB, they would only give her a cash card account, which is a weird account that has limited functionality, including not being able to use Link ATMs. They kept saying they could eventually change it, but they never have, despite nagging.

So we went into HSBC as I bank with them and have generally had less bad experiences than other banks. They weren’t too happy about doing it at 2:30pm on a Saturday, but eventually agreed to see us. However, they then moaned that we only had two months of bank statements, not three, and so couldn’t continue. So we stormed out of there.

Next we went to Lloyds TSB and once again asked them if they could upgrade the account. They said that their old system that isn’t 100% accurate said no, they couldn’t give her a real current account, but they couldn’t check for sure as their new system wasn’t working. They couldn’t give us a reason either – just “computer says no”, so we left there too.

The next bank along the street was Natwest who aim to be “Britain’s most Helpful Bank”. That is an admirable aim, but then, when you think about it, it’s really like being “Britain’s most gentle rapist” = admittedly more gentle than other rapists, but still ultimately a dick that abuses everyone who comes near it.

So we decided to skip that one and pop in to Nationwide, who are a building society.

They closed at the same time as HSBC, but were willing to set up the account anyway. Indeed, our account manager Shabana actually kept the branch open for us for an extra half an hour while we sorted everything out! She talked us through all their accounts and they immediately accepted Elina for a proper account.

I was so impressed, that I left with a new current account for myself as well! Of course, time will tell whether they continue to deliver on customer service, but so far it has been an incredibly refreshing experience.

Linux has a great tool called whereis that allows you to find the location of an executable. For example, if you want to know what PHP binary you are using, you could use the following command.

$ whereis php
/usr/local/php

However, if you run this on Mac it will often return you a black result, even though you know the command works!

$ whereis convert

The solution is to use which instead, which does the the same thing, but actually returns results.

$ which convert
/opt/local/bin/convert

Great for finding those extra mysterious programmes.

Due to the increasing number of people that tell me I need to relax more, which while was initially just friends, now includes doctors and therapists, I have decided to start playing Warhammer once again.

Having played a lot of 40K when I was a child, I’ve decided to go with some Fantasy this time and have begun once again building an army to wage war – photos on their way. In the mean time, if your a fellow player, or intrigued to give it a try, now is the time! Norm has already started building a band of Chaos Warriors and by the tim this is published, I’m fairly sure Fonze will be building something too…

Recently, we noticed that there is a Frankie & Benny’s at Crown Point Retail Park, just round the corner from our house. This is yet another place where you can get a half decent rack of ribs that is a bit too close for my waistline not to suffer.

That said, what I was most impressed with when we went there was their house salad. Without stereotyping too much, it didn’t seem like the kind of restaurant that would do a good salad, but it turns out I was wrong.

As ever we saw out the year in style before going down the traditional route of having January at the start. I joined a gym (after getting free trials of one or two first of course) and got on a plane for the first time in over a decade. Meanwhile, we tried to teach retired people about social media and launched ZonePlay on PlanetWin365 at work. Mike even made a guest appearance at Wendy House.

In February it turned out Panic! At the Disco were still going while the Foundation launched Societas Pro, an open source community group management system, and launched Gift of Gloves – a warm clothing collection for people sleeping rough. Then there were as the usual celebrations – Valentine’s Day, Darwin Day, Copernicus Day and Galileo Day, not to mention Super Bowl XLVI. Yet, somehow, we managed to fit moving house into there too.

It was a busy month for the Foundation in March, when it launched the new Humanist Chaplaincy Network programme and distributing all the clothing we had collected. Meanwhile, I took Elina to Paris and we warmed our new house. Possibly the best season of Formula One in living memory kicked off, I finally made it down to the Leeds PHP User Group and some mysterious yellow ball started to appear in the sky once again.

It was all about business in April. After three years at Buzz, I left to set up Worfolk Limited, as well as Worfolk Games, taking up much of the month. But we did find time to celebrate Fonze’s birthday, try karting and host Martin Robbins to talk about Bad Science in the Developing World. I also finally found a solution to the immigration issue and achieved the unthinkable – I got a photo of Elettra smiling!

In May I gave my first speech at Toastmasters, while Gijsbert spoke about pacifism at West Yorkshire Humanists and A-Soc held its AGM. I learned everything Hugh knows in an hour and Worfolk Games launched Village Chief, a socially interactive strategy game on Facebook. ODDTV launched, there was a “Super Moon” and podcasting returned. Looking back, we probably saw the funniest image of the year here too. The month was rounded off with Know Leeds re-launching as a restaurant review site.

I narrowly avoided rehab by cutting my Foursquare addiction in June, we said goodbye to legendary writer Ray Bradbury and sat through a disappointing Eurovision. Worfolk Online had a busy month, launching Jenny’s Public Nude Photos and our first ever man on man gay site, Gay Men 365. I continued my Toastmasters career and went to Finland for the first time, only to find out that Moomin World didn’t open until the week after. At least I did get to enjoy some alcohol free Rekorderlig though. The month finished out with me becoming treasurer of West Yorkshire Humanists. There was some kind of football competition as well.

I spent some time baiting scammers in July, grabbed the Worfo.lk domain and launched Wing Commander, a library that adds Mustache support to the Flight microframework. We found out Jesus was feeling the recession while Worfolk Online launched it’s first ever foreign language site, a Swedish site called Nakna Hemmafruar and soon followed it up with a Finnish one called Alastomat Kotirouvat. I won my first best speaker ribbon at Toastmasters for my talk on legalising drugs and saw Blink-182 after a year of waiting. Authority Forums relaunched, everything flooded and the Olympic torch passed through Leeds. A quick bit of researched showed motor racing as the sport Brits are best at and Worfolk Online celebrated a decade of running websites. Danny Boyle stunned us all with his magnificent opening ceremony and my website experienced it’s biggest ever traffic surge after my adjusted medals table went viral.

The month of August started with a thrilling few weeks of sport as Britain dominated the competition in the Olympic medal table (China and the US being too far ahead to count as competition) while we started the month by eating a mixed grill in a burger while I baited some more scammers. Gangnam style ran rampant in my head a month before anyone else jumped on it thanks to a tip off from Michelle and I launched my american football blog, A Brit Talks Football. I attended White Rose Speakers for the first time, we said goodbye to Rich as he left for London and the Foundation staged the 2012 Worfolk Lecture. Leeds celebrated Pride 2012 and we said goodbye to Neil Armstrong. I touched down in Ireland for the first time, when I took Elina to Dublin for the bank holiday weekend.

Elina knitted a Dalek in September and we found a new contender for the best steak house in Leeds. Humanist Community changed its format and my new proximity to Elina meant we could now go for ribs for lunch (although, to be fair, we had been doing this anyway). I won the club level humorous speaking competition and went on to win the area competition too. We also started our photography course and the NFL season kicked off (more importantly, I cared, for the first year ever).

In October we discovered a hidden gem in the form of Miah’s Kitchen Indian restaurant and we tried wagyu steak for the first time. Team Europe staged a record breaking comeback in the Ryder Cup, Full Tilt Poker relaunched and I got my new and super awesome laptop along with Apple TV. I attended the PHPNW12 Conference and once again ticked over another year – a good excuse to finally drink the bottle of champagne I’ve been moving around since Buzz’s first product launch. I finished off the month by travelling to Donington Park to compete in the division level competition of the humorous speaking contest.

I spent a lot of November playing with my new lens, but did find time to attend the 2012 North West Humanists Conference. I went to Manchester to see Evanescence and the Foundation launched the 2012 Holiday Food Drive and as part of International Men’s Day, our Men’s Issues campaign as well. The Humanist Action Group also published a new guide for running food drives, while the United States reelected Obama and we attended GRAM 2012. Living out our dreams, myself, George and Matt went training with the Yorkshire Rams and myself and Elina attended the Finnish Christmas Carols concert in Headingley, while the Formula One season finished in style at Brazil as living legend Michael Schumacher announced his retirement.

We finished off the year, as is traditional, with December. This involved partying for George’s birthday and finishing our photography course. I took on the role of Toastmaster for the first time and A-Soc held it’s traditional Winter Solstice Meal. The Humanist Action Group successfully completed its 2012 Holiday Food Drive, raising £2,849.15 worth of donations for local homeless shelters and we went to watch the Leeds Celtics play. America had it’s traditional holiday season massacre and that whole Christmas thing happened.

Over the holidays I managed to clear out 15 bags of rubbish to some space for new stuff. After all that though, I don’t actually seem to have made that much space :S.