Chris Worfolk's Blog

I hope people in the office didn’t think this was all for one lunch.

Last month, I entered the Leeds City club competition of the Toastmasters humorous speaking contest. In a bit of a bookies upset, I won, which resulted in my proceeding on to the area level competition.

I had done quite a lot of preparation going in to it – Dinesh had volunteered to come over and evaluate it, I also did it in front of my parents and sister, as well as going to the other Toastmasters club based in Leeds, White Rose, to gather more feedback.

The day itself didn’t start too well though – having avoided the colds going around all week, I was finally struck down on the morning and when I phoned up to check what time I needed to be there, it turns out I was late! So I dragged myself out the door as soon as possible and made it half way through the introductions.

Luckily, my illness didn’t show through too much and in the end I must have done something right, as I ended up winning this one as well!

This means…

A) I’m currently the reigning champion for Area 15 (an area that covers South and West Yorkshire).

B) I proceed on to the division competition. I’m part of Division E, which is an area that covers the North of England and Scotland as well. That takes place in Donington later this month!

Last month, I wrote about how I had increased my income significantly by switching jobs.

This isn’t always the case though. Indeed, Business Insider recently published an article suggesting that people who hop from job to job to climb the corporate ladder actually earn less money.

In their figures, people who stayed in the same job for five years experienced pay increases of around 8% on average, compared to 5% for those who changed jobs regularly. This may be unrepresentative of the wider market as it was a survey of those in Silicon Valley, though this should actually make it more comparable to my figures.

When I was at school, we once read a short story about a world that made everyone equal by giving everyone a disability.

For example, if you were intelligent, you had to wear a buzzer in your ear that stopped you from thinking about something too much, if you were strong and athletic, you had to wear weights to drag you down – everyone was equally beaten down.

Of course, this was a story about a ridiculous society, that none of us would want to live in. Or so you would think. But more and more recently, it seems people are arguing for such a society.

There is a lot of inequality in this world. But some people seem to think the answer is restricting more people’s freedoms, rather than granting further freedoms to others.

I came across an example of this on Twitter recently. It wasn’t an ideal example, but will suffice.

The author of said point correctly points out that there is a double standard here. Women have the freedom to appear topless in The Sun’s Page 3, but a man who wanted to get his penis out, would not be allowed to go to print.

It’s a classic case of discrimination against men.

But clearly, the solution is to increase the amount of freedom in our society by allowing a newspaper to publish a penis on its third page. Not to place equal restrictions on everyone on what we’re not allowed to publish.

Unfortunately, such attitudes, from people who would presumably like to think of themselves as progressive (though I could be entirely wrong there) actually play directly into the traditional political-religious structure that aims to control society though the suppression of human sexuality.

After all, rationally, there is nothing wrong with putting a picture of a penis in a newspaper. Almost half the world has one, it’s perfectly natural and maybe if we did it more, we wouldn’t have so many ridiculous taboos around sex and sexuality (and everyone would benefit from this, though especially the LGBT community).

So, if we’re actually trying to push a progressive agenda, do you think we could be progressive with our freedoms, rather than regressive?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The story was “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut.

About ten years ago, everyone started to panic about the increased use of mobile phones while driving, because they seemed to be causing lots of accidents. The response was to ban the practice, which became illegal in 2003, unless you were using a handsfree set.

This was widely supported by the mobile phone industry who happily charged us lots of money to provide a variety of handsfree solutions, from simple holders to elaborate integrated in-car systems.

The problem is however, they don’t work. Driving while talking on a handsfree kit is just as dangerous as driving while holding the handset. Multiple studies have all supported the same conclusion.

It’s easy to see how this situation happened. You assume it is the act of holding the phone, so without testing it, you suggest it as an idea and phone manufacturers jump on it as an easy way to make more money from us. To further their own profits, they continue to push the idea that it is safer to drive using handsfree, even though it isn’t.

In fact, it turns out that it is the act of holding a conversation, which takes some of your attention away from the road, that reduces the safety. So it is irrelevant whether you’re holding the handset or not.

Worth thinking about, next time you take a call on your handsfree set.

cPanel offers two options for installing PDO – using EasyApache which can enable PDO and MySQL’s PDO driver or installing everything via PECL. Unfortunately, under PHP 5.3, the PECL installers don’t work, so if you need any other PDO drivers, you’re in a hole.

Luckily, you can install it manually.

Download the PDO driver from the PECL website. Extract the archive and CD into the directory.

wget http://pecl.php.net/get/PDO_PGSQL
tar -xzf PDO-PGSQL-1.0.2.tgz
cd PDO-PSQL-1.0.2/

Once this is done, run the standard commands for building a PHP extension.

phpize
./configure
make
make install

Once this is done, you can add the extension to php.ini.

cd /usr/local/lib/
vim php.ini
extension=pdo_pgsql.so

Finally, restart Apache and the Postgres driver should show up in your phpinfo() output.

The rain swelled the River Aire, so I decided to go out with my camera. It’s quite difficult, but strangely satisfying, to manage to take a photo while holding an umbrella up with your knees.

Last Friday, myself and Elina went to Miah’s Kitchen for lunch.

You can see my Miah’s Kitchen review over on Know Leeds for a full low down on the food, but the short answer is that I recommend it! But that isn’t what I want to talk about here.

When we arrived, we were the only people there. They had at least three waiters working, but no customers. It didn’t look like they would be getting any either – they only open 12-2, and this was at nearly 1pm.

Yet, as we walked in and I asked for a table for two, the waiter replied “do you have a reservation?” 😀

I almost wondered if he was taking the piss at first. It wasn’t a small place – they probably had about fifty covers, all of which were laid out but empty, why ask if we had a reservation? But I just said “no”.

Then, even funnier, they asked us to take a seat in the waiting area while they found us a table :D. We obliged and soon enough they had found one for us.

They were all very nice, though it did seem a rather formal procedure for a restaurant without any other customers.

I needed to get some prints done for my photography course, but this being 2012 and all, obviously I have a digital camera and store all my photos digitally. So I headed onto the internet to find someone who would print them for me.

I ended up going with Photobox, who tempted me in with their free prints offer and then insisted I was an existing customer and so I wasn’t entitled to it. Apparently, I had already signed up with them, so I guess that is fair enough.

It was a bit of an ordeal to upload my photos as their Java applet kept crashing, but I eventually uploaded them by FTP (they do at least have a great array of upload methods) and sent them to print – except for one, that they insisted was too small to print.

It was around £5 for 26 photos, including delivery I think and the print quality is as you would expect. They also came in a very nice plastic wallet. They also arrived in around 36 hours – I ordered them on Tuesday night, and they arrived Thursday morning.

Will use them again next time I need some prints.

I don’t actually use This Is My Jam, but I’ve been listening to some cool albums recently, so I thought I would share them.

Jack’s Mannequin – People And Things
I’m sure, like me, you discovered Jack’s Mannequin while looking for different versions of Panamore’s Misery Business and stumbling on the compilation album It’s A Misery Business, of which contains their song The Mixed Tape.

They (and I’m being generous there, because it all seems to be Andrew McMahon and a bit of backing) have since released a new album, which I think is their best work yet. They’re a bit emo, so I imagine Si listens to them as well, but not so such that you well adjusted people wouldn’t like them either.

Bowling For Soup – Presents One Big Happy
Bowling For Soup have come out with a new album that features not just themselves, but also The Dollyrots, Jaret Reddick and Kelly Ogden & Patent Pending. Turns out, that combination works really well.

Particularly the album’s first song, “Lets go to the pub”. For some reason, that song really speaks to me.