digital.goth.geek

When typing URLs directly into the address bar for the Liberal Democrats‘ web site, make sure you use http://www.libdems.org.uk/ (with the s) rather than http://www.libdem.org.uk/ (without the s).

You’ll see why.

The Home Secretary today made noises that compensation for miscarriages of justice should be capped at £500,000.

With recent changes to the law to allow the State to now hold people for 28 days without charge (thankfully it’s not the 90 days that the police wanted) (and it’s not the indefinite and illegal methods of the US) this is basically an option

The Government thinks that it can save about £5m a year in compensation claims. £5m?! £5m is nothing in terms of State expenditure in the UK. There’s just been an announcement that the Government is to spend an additional £800m on Iraq/Afghanistan (which, coincidentally, is the same as the current NHS deficit).

This is obviously not about the money (although the Daily Mail et al will probably frontpage it as such) it’s about control and responsibility. The Government wants to be able to hold one, uncharged, for as long as possible, and then limit it’s own liability when they’re forced to let one go (through lack of evidence, etc.) or when they’ve just got it plain wrong.

This is, in my opinion, just another example of Blair & co.’s attitude to the British public: they’re not here for us, we’re here to do what they say. I think it’s only a matter of time before there’s such a backlash against this government that it’ll make their heads spin.

I’ve now had a full week at my new job as the web architect at The School of Physics within The University of Edinburgh.

As yet, I’ve not managed to do any practical work with any of the web sites that I’ll be involved with (which includes the EPCC) as it’s been a period of settling in, getting to know the various people that I’ll be working with, and digging my way about the htdocs and cgi-bin directories of the web servers that I’ll be working with.

So far so good.

I’ve finally bitten the bullet (again) and upgraded to the latest version of WordPress (again). This time it’s version 2.0.2.

Yesterday I decided to set up a new Paypal account as my last one was registered under my (now defunct) limited company, thus rendered useless as Paypal doesn’t allow you to downgrade an account from a business one to a personal one. There were a few reasons for this, but one of the main ones was so that I could get Mint.

An interesting webcast lecture by Steve Jones from The Royal Society just now, although he did seem rather non-commital (perhaps for fear of offending some high-ranking god botherer) on the whole topic of creationism/intelligent design.

It doesn’t seem that The Royal Society itself is worried about this, after putting out a statement on creationism and ID.

It’s good to see that skepticism is still alive and well.

2 hours, 27 minutes to go…

Johnny was the Chemists son,
But Johnny is no more.
What Johnny thought was H₂O
was H₂SO₄.

*snicker*

Why am I still at work? Why?

Dear KPMG,

Fuck you very much.

Fuck you for telling me that I was made redundant three days after I actually was.

Fuck you for taking two weeks find the paperwork that you’d had for four weeks in storage.

Fuck you very much for not telling me that the company’s insolvency was held up for four weeks because you hadn’t sorted anything out with the courts.

And an especially big fuck you for lying to me and telling me you’d received my claim, and then not telling me that you actually hadn’t until I had to ‘phone-chase you across half of Scotland another four weeks later.

Oh, and fuck you also for not getting in touch with me at any stage to let me know things had gone even further tits up.

Let’s face it: you couldn’t audit yourself out of a wet and defective tissue-paper bag, could you?

Vitriolically yours,

Disappointed of Edinburgh.

So that’s it, I’ve handed in my resignation.

So, I can now happily say that I’m moving on to a full time position as Web Architect for the School of Physics at the University of Edinburgh from the 11th of April, and I’m really looking forward to it. This probably means that I’m a complete and utter geek.

I’ve been asked to see if I can help in finding a replacement for me (as if such a thing existed! ;-) as there is ongoing work here that will need to be done, as well as a number of upcoming projects.

Note that this is primarily a developer position, but any skills as a designer wouldn’t be ignored by any means.

What they’re looking for is:

• a web/multimedia developer, preferably with a knowledge or passion for video production
• excellent Flash, with a good knowledge of Director
• experience of delivering on web/CD/DVD platforms
• good working knowledge of (X)HTML, CSS, XML, XSL, PHP, ColdFusion, ASP, C# and the rest…
• database/web/application server admin experience would be a boon
• ecommerce experience is highly desirable
• design skills (Quark, Photoshop, etc.) would be beneficial
• and the usual stuff (good communication skills, etc.)
• someone looking for a challenge(!)

They’re ideally looking for someone FT, but are willing to take help where they can get it (read ‘contractors’) to pick up the slack until they do.

If you’re interested, bung a letter/CV to Jack Garrow or to me (matt at republicproductions dot com) and I’ll pass it on.

(Yes, the web site will need to be re-done.)

The main reason that I’m leaving is because there’s a large amount of multimedia (mostly Flash) work which, although I used to enjoy it, I’m trying to focus on web application development (you know, that Ajax/Web2.0 nonsense). It’s not really my bag baby, and the new job will be more my kinda thang.