I’m always amazed at the number of vans and lorries I see with a web address such as www.abcsupplies.com but then right next to it is a mickey mouse email address such as abcsupp568@aol.com or abcsupp568@fsnet.co.uk.
If you’ve gone to the trouble of paying for and setting up a proper domain name, then why not use it for your emails as well?
There was a multiple pile up this morning on the M62 between Junctions 6 and 4. Unfortunately, according to the map on the Highways Agency “Traffic England” website, this section of motorway does not seem to exist. As you can see from this screenshot, they’ve even had to put the warning triangle hovering over an apparently non-existent motorway:
It also shows the M57 between junctions 1 and 2 as an A road (makes it look like part of the A5300) and the A5300 is shown as a stub. The correct map should look like this:
I have also taken a look around and according to this map the M65 only goes as far as junction 8. Junctions 9 through to 14 are missing. I’m sure the residents of Burnley, Nelson and Colne would disagree.
UPDATE: 26 Sept 2006
Noticed today that the M57 between junctions 1 and 2 is now correctly coloured blue. The M62 is still missing between 6 and 4 but it’s a start.
UPDATE: 15 Nov 2006
According to David Butler of the Highways Agency:
The reason these junctions do not appear is that they are maintained and repaired by the Local Authority – Liverpool City Council.
This means that the Highways Agency are unable to collect data for that section of Motorway , which in turn would provide the real time information for the Traffic England website.
But that doesn’t explain why the M62 between J4 and J6 is completely missing. Fair enough if they don’t have information to display, but they should at least show a greyed out road.
In order to assist European doctors coming to England to work in the South Yorkshire area, Doncaster West Primary Care Trust have issued a Glossary of Yorkshire Medical Terms.
Please note, if you are easily offended, don’t follow the link..
Further to my previous post about Powerhouse’s lack of support for any browser other than IE, I decided to check if they had changed their attitude, but it would appear that they have gone into administration.
“The youngsters of today have no respect for the police” is a phrase which is often heard today, yet West Midlands Police recent petty actions against a group of children playing hopscotch have done little to build that much needed respect.
According to the BBC, they have “asked parents in Spring Street in Halesowen to remove chalk markings after complaints about them.“. The police refer to these chalk markings as ‘low level crime’, and by tackling that “they could prevent more serious problems developing”. What?! I can hear the warnings now: “Don’t let your daughter play hopscotch Mrs Smith, the next thing you know, she’ll be into prostitution!”.
What they have actually done is the opposite, as this sort of action will cause the children to lose respect for the police.
Sky have finally got around to launching their Remote Record functionality on Sky+.
Basically there are three ways to remotely set your Sky+ digibox to record a programme.
So far, I have only tried the first option. You need to register in the Customer Zone on Sky.com. Sky are then supposed to send you a wap push message to your phone including the address to download the mobile app to your phone, but nothing arrived, even when I tried resending it from the customer zone services area. I found a post on Digital Spy’s forums, which gave the download address for the 156 kbyte app. (the messages did eventually arrive about 2 hours later)
You then have to register your mobile number via your Sky digibox. Press the interactive button on your Sky+ remote and choose ‘Sky Active’. Then go to ‘My Sky’ and select ‘Remote Record’. Enter your mobile number and you should be set up. Note this step requires the phone connection on your digibox as it needs to dial in your registration.
The TV Guide has the same look as on the Sky+ EPG, however you cannot skip forward by typing the channel number as you can on the EPG. This makes finding higher channels a bit of a chore as the data is downloaded for each page.
When you set a program to record, a message says that it will be sent to your digibox in the next thirty minutes, but in practice it’s only a couple of seconds.
Not sure how well the text messaging option will work. What happens if you don’t get the programme name or channel number exactly right? Will the system guess? Also, this option atttracts an extra 25p charge for the confirmation text from Sky.
My Sister, Claire (along with Nick, Anoushka, Jharna, Tonya, and Anna) is running a 10k event at Tatton Park in aid of Cancer Research.
You can help by sponsoring her. If you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to yourself.
Yesterday, an accident caused the M61 to be closed northbound between junction 6 and 8 (there is no junction 7). Not surprisingly, chaos ensued on the surrounding roads, including the A6 and A6027 and while that is to be expected, this was further compounded by the total lack of any police presence to direct traffic.
When was the last time you saw a police officer directing traffic? Do they still do this? Are they still trained to do this?
I’ve just driven down the M6 in heavy rain and surface spray and it is amazing how many people consider side-lights to be sufficient to be seen. What’s totally unbelievable, however, is how many people have no lights on whatsoever, making them virtually invisible!
