This is a list of things currently on ebay. They will be up there till next sunday so feel free to take a look.
With the money I make from these, I’m hoping to be able to afford the new Mac Mini
Unfortunately these items are only available in the UK. Happy bidding!
Since most of the hits from my site come from the Best Mans Speech I wrote for Richard’s wedding, I thought this makes me totally qualified to write on “How to write a Best Man’s speech”. Here goes.
Firstly, there is no point in using a canned speech, except maybe as a guide on how to structure the piece. The best Best Man’s Speeches are those that are unique to the individual groom, and need to reflect this as such. There is no point in putting funny stuff from other speeches just because they are funny – they need to contain more than a hint of truth. More »
There’s an interesting post over at http://txfx.net/2006/10/26/equal-opportunity-and-diversity/ which is quite interesting. Reading the whole discussion is quite enlightening on how people think. My favourite is the quote below from the actual article.
The deluded promoters of “equal opportunity + dedication to diversity†want to believe that an employer can discriminate in favor of one person without necessarily discriminating against someone else. They’re wrong. Discrimination in any direction is the rearranging of a meritocratic result. Discrimination in favor of one person is discrimination against another person. It’s a mathematical fact.
Dead right, regardless of the merits of the discrimination there are always people on both sides. If there wasn’t it would be called “being friendly” I guess.
Hopefully during the next week I should have time to work on several open source projects for a few days. Trouble is… where is the best place to begin? There are so many good projects out there, covering a wide variety of applications, tools and other things, that it is hard to know where to contribute to make a difference.
What I would be interested in, however, is something that makes organising (yes, this is British English after all 
information, and retrieving it easier. Unfortunately, there are a number of projects out there, that whilst good, have no intention of moving into the arena I’m interested in. Several of these applications are Tomboy, Labyrinth to name two in particular. Where I would like to see the two of these projects going is in the direction that neither seems to be taking, namely that of allowing information to be structured in a way that mirrors the brain. I would like to see Tomboy develop a viewing layer on top of the xml data that allows data to be viewed in more than one way, perhaps through the use of xslt and plugins designed to be used with this. It would need two way transformation, as well as the ability to edit in any form. I think this is a pretty tall order. However, the program is not currently structured to allow this.
The above is not a criticism as such of Tomboy, for it is far far better than any desktop tool I’ve seen before, but rather an indication of the direction I’d like to see it take. Unfortunately, if you look at the website, it seems to be merely replicating the functionality of a wiki on the desktop, albeit very elegantly. Having said the above, it is a tool I use daily, and is miles ahead of any windows program that attempts to do a similar job.
Labyrinth, which someone has mentioned as a possible link in to tomboy is again another very useful tool, although not yet as mature as Tomboy. When I say mature I mean its practicality in using the tool everyday is not quite as good as Tomboy, although it is still a pretty useful thing.
I particularly like the idea of a labyrinth style display onto files and folders, showing how they are related in a non-hierarchical manner, such as libraries used by this program, source files for it, and header files and so forth.
I hope to write sometime about Beagle, which is a tool I love and hate at the same time. This relationship will become more clear when I have formulated the post.
Well, Argos finally got back to me on the subject of the “stolen” mp3 player, and basically told me to get lost. By that time, I had already managed to exchange it at one of their other stores, completely making a mockery of the “Store Policy” that I had been informed of in the first store I tried to return it in. Finally, though, I now have a working mp3 player, which is what this was really all about.
I would recommend that people avoid Argos like the plague for anything expensive – you’re not going to be able to return it if you have any problems – at least not without a great deal of hassle. Just look at the following reviews of Argos
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/archive-tv/argos/reviews/
You’ll see what I mean!
August 29, 2006
Subject: Appalling Customer Service at Colliers Wood
Dear Sir or Madam
I am writing to complain about the appalling customer service I received at your store in Colliers Wood.
About two weeks ago (14/08/2006) I purchased a Creative Zen Vision:M (Catalog No. 513/3738) from your store in Marble Arch. Upon taking it home I found the unit to be unsatisfactory, having an acute design flaw which made the player unusable. I attempted to return this to your store in Colliers Wood on the 29th of August 2006 at approximately 7pm.
After waiting for more than half an hour for your staff to attend to my complaint, I was met by the Duty Manager, who informed me that I would not be able to exchange the player as they had none in stock. I had checked the stock levels on entering the store using the stock checking device available to customers in the store, and no one had been served since I had checked the availability. I appreciate that the manager may have been mistaken, or that there was an error in the stock levels available to customers.
However, the manager then proceeded to insinuate that, because I was attempting to return the player to a different store than the one purchased from, I was was a liar and a thief. This was not a pleasant experience, and I found this unacceptable. I voiced this to the manager at the time, who claimed that the reason he was unable to process a refund was due to company policy. Notwithstanding, I find it totally unacceptable for any of your members of staff to accuse someone of lying or stealing with no evidence. I feel that at the very least I am due an apology for the manner in which I was treated.
I wish to point out that this was done in full view of other customers in the store.
Furthermore, I spent in excess of three hours in the process of trying to return this faulty merchandise, a price I was willing to absolve, due to the assumption I would be able to return it. Regrettably this was not the case, and I am now out of pocket for a faulty MP3 player, traveling expenses and, not to mention, my time.
I feel that if I am expected to refrain from abusing your staff, your staff should treat customers with the same courtesy that they expect from customers. At no time during the conversation did I treat any of your staff with any disrespect, despite the disrespect that was shown to me.
I sincerely hope that you will treat this complaint with the seriousness it deserves by not sending a standard reply letter, and addressing the concerns I have voiced. If the matter is not resolved to my satisfaction, I will be sending the aforementioned MP3 player, together with this letter, addressed to the CEO of Argos, explaining how I was treated, and why I will never buy from one of his stores again.
In short, I feel that I have been denied my statutory rights. Not only that, I was humiliated in front of other customers, and have wasted the time that I spent trying to get my money back. I would also wish to point out that the service in that particular store is appalling, as I mentioned in the subject. There were a number of customers in the store at the same time as myself, and they seemed as dissatisfied with the level of service as I was.
My expenses so far in this matter are as follows.
3 hours @ £25/h = £75
1 x MP3 player (Catalog No. 513/3738) = £219.99
Return Bus fare = £1.60
Total = £296.59
Not to mention the humiliation I underwent at the hands of your staff.
My telephone number is on the front of this letter, should you wish to contact me regarding this matter.
Sincerely
This is a summary of what I’ve learned from the “getting things done” methodology.
Firstly, I haven’t been using the techniques very long, so what I say may be overly critical, because I haven’t got to grips with it yet. Secondly, I would welcome any feedback on how I could improve my usage of it, or tweak the techniques to become more efficient.
My initial impression was that it produces a lot of items in the todo list, which immediately made me think that there was too much to do. What I realised from reading the rest of the book after doing this, was that not all of the things on the todo list necessarily are worth doing. Some of the items can be delegated, ignored or postponed to a later date. Immediately after doing this, however, I did feel a relief that everything was written down, meaning I didn’t have to keep the todo list in my head. I could simply refer to it.
I chose to use outlook as a glorified todo list, you may well have chosen differently. The reason I chose this, is that I have access to it at work and at home, so I can maintain a common format between these two locations. I decided that for work items it really wasn’t much point in categorising by context, as my job does not involve much travelling (beyond the commute to work). I rearranged the categories to define the type of work that I was doing. My job is of a technical nature, so there is little scope for using contexts.
Having written some small vba code to interface with our current tracking software, I feel that this pretty much covered the collection phase, as everything at work that needs doing should in theory be logged in this.
Having attempted to do this now for about a month seems to be paying off. I feel a bit more organised. However, it does seem like I’m missing something here. There is no scope withing GTD for projects, other than as a list of connected actions. The handling of projects is left largely up to the opinion of the implementor, and no advice is given on this. I would have liked to have seen some more guidance on how to handle larger items, rather than as a small series of interconnected tasks. I found this to be extremely unhelpful in helping me to see the bigger picture of larger items. Your experience may vary on this. This particularly is what I’m interested in trying to improve. You are welcome to comment, if you have any suggestions, or think I’ve totally missed the point here.
Please download and install firefox, the mozilla based browser. Then hit Ctrl-T to open a new tab. There are a number of benefits to using firefox, not least the tabbed browsing functionality, but also increased security, and the easy access to a search engine of your choice in the top right hand corner.
A handy hint is click on Tools –> Extensions then click get extensions. There are a large number of extensions available which can make your life easier. Personally I would recommend getting adblock, which cuts down the amount of advertising you see on sites. To get rid of adverts, simply right click on them and select the appropriate option. You will never see ads like that again.
If you are a web developer, check out the Web Developer extension, which allows you to muck about with css and html as well as change the size of the browser window to simulate different resolutions.
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