October 26, 2005
Did you mean...

My favorite Google screen for ages: Did you mean: dobedobedo.

Posted to Funny by Simon Brunning at 02:52 PM
October 24, 2005
London Python Meetup

One for your diaries, London based nerds; The next London Python/Django/Ruby/Rails meetup will be on Monday 7th of November at The Old Bank of England, Fleet Street. Sam has booked us a back room, so there might be some chance of hearing any demos that might go on this time. Until I get pissed and start singing, that is.

If you fancy coming, do leave a comment. People like to be sure that they won't be the only ones there. ;-)

Posted to Python by Simon Brunning at 05:10 PM
Dead Parrot

I'm sorry, but no matter how serious the story, I can't read about a dead parrot without laughing. Is it just me?

Posted to Funny by Simon Brunning at 04:53 PM
Normal Service has been resumed

Given how rarely I update these days, you'd be forgiven for not noticing that SVoC has been down. Old credit card detaiuls regisrtered with the host, letter went to my parent's address, yada yada yada. Anyway, it's all shiney again now.

If you attempted to email be and it bounced, please try again now...

Posted to Blogs by Simon Brunning at 04:51 PM
October 19, 2005
Guess where *I* am?

I popped into a nice local pub, The Colliers Tup, on the way home this evening (first time this month - I'm working much too hard at the moment), only to find they have WiFi! Excellent! Nice fast link, too.

On the down side, this will cause me to drink myself to death. Worse, it will cause me to drink myself to death on expensive beer. But on the plus side, I can blog from the pub. How cool is that?

Posted to Beer by Simon Brunning at 07:37 PM
October 18, 2005
They just don't *want* anyone voting for them, do they?

Ken Clarke eliminated.

Posted to The Big Room by Simon Brunning at 05:43 PM
ID Cards latest

The more I hear, the more confident I am that ID cards will be the solution to identifying terrorists. Unless they are British, of course. Or smiling. Or bald, or brown eyed.

And we should stop worrying about all this anti-terrorist legislation, too. It's only being used against perpetrators of the most horrendous crimes at the moment, such as, uh, hecklers and pedestrians. Who can object to that? I'm hoping that they extend anti-terror legislation to cover people who eat noisy snacks in the theatre, or wear backpacks on the underground.

Update: Oh yes, and those photographers, too.

Posted to The Big Room by Simon Brunning at 01:28 PM
Blog Awards 2005

And the best-excuse-for-linking-to-a-site-featuring-scantily-clad-women award goes to...

Licence to Roam, Wonderbra.

Good effort, sir.

Update: Seems it's a madam, not a sir, and may therefore not be simply a blatant look-at-the-pretty-girls post. Still, I enjoyed it, so good effort nevertheless. ;-)

Posted to Funny by Simon Brunning at 01:11 PM
October 12, 2005
Selenium

We've not automated our functional tests in the past - I know, I know - but we are really trying to pick up our game in our currenty project, so manual functional testing is another of our bad habits that we are consigning to the dustbin of history. With a bit of a steer from Sam, I looked at a number of functional test tools, but Selenium really stood out from the rest. It's just powerful enough, it's really simple, and it runs in your browser, so you can test browser compatability. Take a look at the demos to see how simple it all is.

In essence, your test script is just an HTML table, each line of which is either an action or an assertion. There's even a tool to record your actions to give you a hand building regression tests.

Now I just need to work out how to integrate it all with Cruise Control. Anyone done this?

Oh yes, and I need to find a way of testing our web services, too. Is there no end to the array of tools that you need to build a web application these days?

Posted to JavaScript by Simon Brunning at 04:59 PM
October 10, 2005
Python/Ruby Meetup tonight

Don't forget the London Python/Django/Ruby/Rails/Kamaelia meetup this evening...

Posted to Python by Simon Brunning at 03:12 PM
Cracking toasted Gromit

Looks like someone really didn't like The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Posted to Music and Film by Simon Brunning at 02:53 PM
October 07, 2005
That's why I never kiss them on the mouth

I'm off to see Serenity this evening with assorted Marks and others. We'll be meeting up at Waxy O'Connors, and going in the the UGC.

Serenity, in case you've been living under a rock for the last six months, or aren't a total nerd, is the Film follow up to the excellent Firefly TV series. Fingers crossed it's good - and that the georgeous Saffron is in it.

Posted to Music and Film by Simon Brunning at 03:47 PM
God told me to post this

George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'

Well that's just fucking great, George. Who's God going to tell you to attack next? Iran? North Korea? Canada?

This is the man with his finger on the button. Feeling safe?

Update: Bush denies it. God probably told him to. "Keep the revalations to yourself, Dubya, or they'll all want one," said the voice in his head.

Posted to The Big Room by Simon Brunning at 11:03 AM