http://www.itpro.co.uk/623140/brit-fined-1-000-for-angry-airport-tweet

Oh, well holidays are over. I expect plenty of you have been back at work for ages / got no break at all / … but for many of us today is the first day back - deep joy.

For those of you who don’t understand the reference here’s a link to the joke and it even has an explanation!

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/English/other/3621722-back_on_your_head.html

(In my version the rooms only vary in the depth of the sewage.)

As an aside I thought this was the name of an album (complete with sewage illustration) by the groundhogs but google hasn’t found it - have I got that wrong?

If you’ve never been to http://thereifixedit.com/ you’ve missed treat of ingenuity and stupidity. As a fan of Scrap Heap Challenge (http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/scrapheap2008/index.html) this kind of thing is obviously right up my street.

Unfortunately they don’t seem to have a best of, so just browse through the tags - my favourite is There, I Fixed It: Epic Kludges + Jury Rigs ingenuity « which is a bit more positive than http://thereifixedit.com/tag/stupidity/

Maybe I should set up  site just for coding kludges, or maybe I should send in a pic of the leaf blower I tried to make by gaffer taping a bag over the outlet of my Dyson.

It’s a fine line from ingenuity to insanity  or indeed insanitary http://thereifixedit.com/tag/bathroom/

I’m sort of dubious about politicians’ ability to say sorry for anything except their own mistakes but I guess Gordon Brown’s apology regarding the treatment of Alan Turing is welcome. http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

Having just been to the Greenbelt Festival, a christian environment in which gays get a better hearing than most, and having heard some of what Bishop Gene Robinson had to say I am more aware than usual of appalling treatment gays have (and still do in too many environments) receive.

On a personal note, I’m old enough to remember some of the abuses of the 70’s (but no earlier!) and I’m only one generation removed from Turing. My old prof from university days did at one time share an office with Alan Turing - indeed it was joked round the department that was the more likely the cause of his suicide. Maybe not in great taste, but it was the 70’s.

I’ve just had to moan at the Beeb (again). They have been reporting in the social housing report saying that claims of “queue jumping” are proved wrong by evidence that “equal numbers” are in social housing. Der, queue jumping is about the time spent waiting not the final results.

Does it matter? If equal numbers of ethnic groups are housed (by which I assume they mean proportional to the population or to the applicants or … it could get quite complicated!), anyway if some sort of equality is in place isn’t everyone (except the BNP) happy?

I doubt it. If you have been waiting for years for housing you are not going to happy! If authorities deny problems then extremists pick up supporters and if someone can provide a scape goat to aim your anger at then it takes strong person not wallow in a blame fest.

So yes it does matter because by potentially miss-reporting angry people will feel unrepresented and be driven into the arms of the BNP etc.

Has this got anything to do with IT? Only that accuracy is important - maybe that is a lesson I learned coding. Many of us create / review reports, read / generate statistics, make / influence management decisions and doing it right and being seen to do right can make a huge difference to work force moral.

I am starting a campaign to find a new term for someone who wants things to be right - perfectionist, pedant are negative terms. Is there already a word for someone who expects the details to be right when they matter but doesn’t get fussy when they don’t? I can’t think of one so I’m inventing “accuratist” - I expect it’s copyright to a watch company!

Working from home has many advantages - one of which is not having to struggle through the snow to try and get into the office. Given that I have had no transport problems, haven’t had to get up early to try and get in, haven’t got home late, haven’t wrecked my car or broken a limb in accidents it would be churlish to complain that when my wife and son were both given “snow days” yesterday I had to dip into holiday to join them sledging at the park. So I won’t, I’ll just say it was a day worth taking off.  Even if I wasn’t a home worker & had been forced to stay at home I could have quite easily done some work from home so taking holiday seems a reasonable thing.

There have been various complaints about how schools close so quickly - people blaming our health and safety culture on not wanting to risk kids in an icy playground. Certainly when I was a kid we didn’t get time off for bad weather. The truth is that it is not about icy playgrounds and parents suing for fallen kids but that teachers can’t get into work.  I didn’t get snow days as a kid but all (bar one) of the teachers lived in the town and could walk in.

The difference between then & now is the distance people travel to get to work - and health & safety & political correctness and … But you can’t blame them for everything.

I think I may be the victim of a “phone scam”. This morning two lasses came round claiming to be students just moved into the house a couple of doors a way. The said they were trying to set up their internet connection

Too much security? I’m always complaining about it - however unless my wife has really spent