blog.sparetomato.com

A work project has got me really enthused at the moment (and it takes a lot to do that!). Basically, we need the ability to generate HTML-based emails from a WYSIWYG editor. After playing around a bit with it, I’ve managed to come up with something that looks pretty good (even if I do say so myself!)

It’s not finished yet, and there are some bugs (and a lot more, such as image includes to go in) but the basics are there:

Click here to try it

It’s rather geeky, so I’m not going to go into any great detail about how it works, just that I’m rather chuffed with the way it is going at the moment.

I would really like to use public transport… really I would. My daily commute is frustrating, boring, expensive and pollutes the environment. The possibility of sitting on a warm, dry (albeit overcrowded) train while someone else does the hard work is very appealing. However, last night showed that dream simply isn’t feasable.

My car is in for some service work, so I was forced to look to public transport to get home. After agreeing with my boss that I could leave early to try and catch the 4:55 train, I set off for the station. Full of enthusiasm for the adventure that lay ahead. I arrived at the station at 4:53 and purchased my ticket. Arriving at the platform, there was a reasonably-sized crowd, that gave me hope that I had not missed the 4:55. However, 5pm came and went, and I was relaxed, safe in the knowledge that I may have missed the 4:55 train, but there was another at 5:15. Time passes, more people arrive.

There is no announcement on the tannoy, and the computer screens showing train status are not working. by 5:30, there must be at least 100 people on the platform. Still no announcements. I hold my ground, knowing that the moment I leave the platform, a train will arrive.

5:45, and many passengers are starting to get agitated (myself included). So I bite the bullet and head back down to the booking office. “Temporarily Closed”. Again, the screens are blank. I return to the platform, still no news. I then decide to see if I can find any information on my WAP phone. Nothing. The Rail information website is entirely graphical driven, and unsuitable for a mobile device (probably unsuitable for blind/disabled viewers, but that’s another story).

6:15 and there is finally a tannoy announcement that there are no trains. Heading back down to the ticket office, hoping for more information, there is a member of staff there, but he is chatting on his mobile phone. He then leaves the building to talk to some taxi drivers. The crowd follow like sheep, hoping for some information, but still nothing.

Resolving to take the bus, I phone the information line and ask about the ticket that I bought, under the pretence of there being a train available (after all, there was no notification otherwise…) I was told that it is not policy to issue refunds for single tickets.

I then had to take a 45 minute bus journey to Birmingham, followed by a train to Wolverhampton. 3 hours after leaving work, I finally arrived home.

With public transport this reliable, how can we even consider ditching the cars?

Dear Mr. Stallone,

It was with great dismay that I read in this article that you are indeed planning to make a sixth installment in the Rocky saga.

As a lifelong fan of the series, I implore you to reconsider.

From a story arc point of view, a sixth installment makes no sense. Rocky rose from nothing to the top, lost it all, regained it again, lost his mentor, his former enemy turned ally and eventually loses all his fortunes and discovers that it is all for nothing if not the love of his family.

If the rumours of the storyline are to be believed, he will come out of retirement to try and earn money.

If he is that desperate for money, then perhaps he should consider embarking on the book and celebrity circuit (however, after-dinner speeches may not be his forte) As the legendary Mohammad Ali has shown, there is a lot of money to be made in TV appearences and book signing sessions. I’m sure his autobiography would become a best seller, although perhaps a ghost-writer should be used. However, I understand that “Rocky VI - The Book Store Tour” would not make a particularly thrilling film.

There is also the realism factor. Granted the Rocky movies have not always been the most realistic, but I have always seen Rocky as being more or less the same age as you. If the production scedule is correct, you (and Rocky) will turn 60 during the film. From a quick search on the Internet, I’ve found that the oldest profesisonal boxer to win the world title was George Foreman at 46 years old. In Rocky V, Rocky would probably be about that age, being as he had a teenage son. Of course, makeup can make a man younger, and there is no suggestion of how much time has passed between Rocky V and VI, but from a realism stance, Rocky would be too old.

In Rocky V, it is revealed that Rocky has suffered severe brain damage, and that another fight could kill him. Adrienne would never support Rocky getting back in the ring, and in his son, he has too much to live for - why would he get back in the ring? The character of Adrienne grows in strength through the films, to the point where she even stands up to Rocky and tells him that he can’t win against Ivan Drago. She is certainally strong enough to divorce Rocky.

Rocky is an “All-American Hero”, a cultural icon. His inspirational story, as I have already alluded to, highlights that with the love of his family, he doesn’t need anything else. However, should he come out of retirement again, with the probability of his marriage breaking up, he would become a washed-up has been. He was strong enough in Rocky V to walk away, and that, in the words of the Elton John song in the end titles is “The Measure of a Man”.

So again, I implore you to look at what you are doing, and look at the parallels that your life has with Rocky, and be the bigger man and walk away.

Yours faithfully,

sparetomato.com

I think I may have resolved my Outlook calendar synching with iPod issue!

When trying to synch a my Outlook calendar with my iPod, using iTunes 5.0.1, I was getting “an unknown error has occurred(-50)” Error -50 is basically Apple’s “catch-all” error, for something they didn’t expect to happen. I managed to resolve this and get the Outlook calendar to synch with the iPod by deleting all my calendar entries and starting again. This worked fine until tonight.

I added a calendar event to Outlook using my smartphone and used Active Sync to bring the event into my main Outlook calendar. However, I then connect the iPod and the error occured. Seeing as I knew I’d only added one Calendar entry since I last synched the iPod, I was able to delete it, and the calendar synched OK.

I then added a new calendar item directly to Outlook, again, it synched with the iPod OK.

Therefore I’ve reached the conclusion, that the Outlook calendar will not synch with the iPod if you’ve added events using a separate device. Can anyone confirm this?

Not really much of an issue, I suppose I can live without my calendar being on the iPod, and simply rely on my multitude of other diaries

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that is indeed a photo on my iPod.

When I bought my iPod, it wasn’t for the “Photo” functionality, all I wanted was an MP3 player with a large storage capacity. 30 Gigabytes seemed like the ideal amount, and despite the fact that it was called an “iPod Photo” (Apple have now dropped the Photo suffix) I thought I would never use that feature.

However, while randomly clicking around iTunes 5, I found that Apple had added support for syncing the iPod calendar and contacts with Outlook. Fantastic! So instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing (I get easily distracted) I set about syncing my iPod

Unfortunately, I found that there were errors when trying to sync the calendar - no idea why, but hopefully this document on the Apple Website might help, I’ll try it tonight.

Anyway, to curb my disappointment of not being able to upload my calendar onto yet another device (my smartphone and two diaries all contain my calendar as well as outlook!) I set about trying the photo feature. And so I now have 3 of my favourite photos on my iPod… not that I think I’ll use them much, but with 20 Gigabytes of unused space on the iPod, I may as well put some of it to use!