bitful

UK-based weblog on technology, queerness, language and fitness

Archive for July 2007

bawdy

Saturday 14 July 2007

Humorously coarse; risqué. Vulgar; lewd.

If it does not fit you, it is not fit for your closet

Friday 13 July 2007

So now not only can I squeeze into my skinny jeans again (well, I say skinny, the label says 32W), but I can even go out in public in them (I wore them a couple of weeks ago to a garden party spent inside due to the rain). The trick is not sitting down.
I have [...]

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tabernacle

Friday 13 July 2007

The portable sanctuary in which the Jews carried the Ark of the Covenant through the desert. A case or box on a church altar containing the consecrated host and wine of the Eucharist. A place of worship.

Emoze: free push email for all

Thursday 12 July 2007

Email on the go does not necessarily involve a Blackberry, a server that pushes email to you and a costly subscription. You can achieve pretty much the same if you have the following:

a desktop machine running Outlook
a mobile phone that syncs with Outlook - any Windows smartphones or pocket PCs will do
emoze installed on both [...]

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ornery

Thursday 12 July 2007

Mean-spirited, disagreeable, and contrary in disposition; cantankerous.

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern Cross for Valour

Wednesday 11 July 2007

I watch less and less Big Brother with every passing year, and this being season 8, I practically tuned in on opening night and then just read Grace Dent's TV OD at Radio Times on Mondays and Thursdays.
Grace Dent makes me giggle. I wish I could say that the way she describes what goes on [...]

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WordPress 412 error workaround

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Sometimes you may get a 412 error in WordPress:
Precondition Failed. The precondition on the request for the URL /wp-admin/post.php evaluated to false.
This is more often than not a result of your host running mod_secutiry, an overzealous (yet useful) utility that filters incoming data. Some people found they could not post an entry with the word [...]

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hemlock

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Any of several poisonous plants of the genera Conium and Cicuta, such as the poison hemlock. A poison obtained from the poison hemlock.

What is Twitter?

Tuesday 10 July 2007

Don't sneer - not everyone is as web-savvy as you lot.
So yes, these days anyone who's anyone in social media circles is jumping Twitter's ship and moving over to Pownce. It's sort of like Twitter, but with file share (messages, links, files, and events). It's sort of like IM, but you can send files to [...]

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encroach

Tuesday 10 July 2007

To take another's possessions or rights gradually or stealthily. To advance beyond proper or former limits.

WordPress weekly del.icio.us script

Monday 9 July 2007

When I 'undesigned' this website, I removed the links to the last five del.icio.us bookmarks from the right-hand side column and started looking for a more elegant and flexible solution than the (otherwise very well working) del.icio.us daily blog posting functionality.
It took me a while, but I finally managed to find, tweak and implement it. [...]

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My week on the web

Monday 9 July 2007

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

My Mom Hand-Knit An iPhone
An uber-cool mother's knitting saga, and the tips and details to help other knit-happy folks save 800USD.
When 'Digital Natives' Go to the Library
An article explaining why libraries and librarians should evolve and take a page out [...]

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bathetic

Monday 9 July 2007

Characterized by bathos (insincere or grossly sentimental pathos).

Sunday lunch: bangers and mash with red wine gravy

Sunday 8 July 2007

British cuisine is quite special. Often, the name of the dish is the recipe itself. Cheese and beans on toast. Scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam.
Ok, I'll grant you these are not the most elaborate of recipes, but that's exactly why I'm so keen on them.
Today (or rather, on Thursday night, one of the [...]

Continue reading Sunday lunch: bangers and mash with red wine gravy

Learning to be less obsessed with money

Sunday 8 July 2007

I used to log on to Windows Money every single day (sometimes twice a day) to download transactions from my bank accounts and log all my cash expenses.
Clearly, that was madness. I have kept a log of everything I spend every day ever since I can remember, first on paper notebooks, then on Filofax printed [...]

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cooper

Sunday 8 July 2007

One that makes or repairs wooden barrels and tubs.

What were you doing on 07/07/07 at 07:07:07?

Saturday 7 July 2007

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What were you doing on 07/07/07 at 07:07:07?, originally uploaded by bitful.

On 07/07/07 at 07:07:07 I was in the middle of trying to figure out an error thrown by a PHP script, and I [...]

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7 things I did not know last week

Saturday 7 July 2007

Horses can mate with zebras. A zorse is the offspring of a zebra stallion and a horse mare; the rarer reverse pairing is sometimes called a hebra. I am not making this up. A hebra was recently born in Berlin. Wait, no, that's a zorse. Whatever.
Britons eat one-third of all the cod consumed in the [...]

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tchotchke

Saturday 7 July 2007

A cheap showy trinket. (Also chachka or tsatske).

My waking-up goodies drawer

Friday 6 July 2007

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My waking-up goodies drawer, originally uploaded by bitful.

I have not had a Saturday morning lie-in since, well, I've never had one, and now that I need one I've prepared a drawer full of goodies [...]

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My data stream (or how to merge five streams into one)

Friday 6 July 2007

Over the past few months I have been fascinated by data/stream aggregators and have subscribed to many such services to see what they would do.
Some that I have been enjoying pottering around in are:

Tumblr
Profilactic
SuprGlu
iStalkr
Dandelife

(Have you also got the feeling they are running out of good names?)
And here is what my scattered activities across the web [...]

Continue reading My data stream (or how to merge five streams into one)

limey

Friday 6 July 2007

A British sailor. An English person. (Short for lime juicer, from the use of lime juice on British warships in order to prevent scurvy).

Similar Posts Wordpress plugin

Thursday 5 July 2007

I have installed a plugin that displays links to archived similar entries below each post. The past is coming back and biting my behind. Not sure I like it.
For a while now I have been wanting to display some links to similar posts below each entry. I had explored a few possibilities but I wanted [...]

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polyamory

Thursday 5 July 2007

The desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

cant

Wednesday 4 July 2007

A slanted or oblique surface. Monotonous talk filled with platitudes. The special vocabulary peculiar to the members of an underworld group; argot.

10 days until I come out at work

Tuesday 3 July 2007

I've been working in the same team for fifteen months now and I have not told anyone I am gay.
Well, nobody asked - and I love and cherish the UK and the people who inhabit this glorious land because they mostly mind their bloody business, one of the qualities that earn my highest esteem and [...]

Continue reading 10 days until I come out at work

7 things I did not know last week

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Fabric softener can make your acne worse because it's oily and you rub towels and bed linen constantly on your skin.
A person who is attracted to an overweight sexual partner is called a chubby chaser.
Your RSS feed URL shows your Twitter user number. Via Steve Rubel.
The theremin was the first musical instrument designed to be [...]

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spelunk

Tuesday 3 July 2007

To explore natural caves.

My photo on the Schmap London Guide

Monday 2 July 2007

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Cheap and grumpy, originally uploaded by bitful.

Blimey. A cameraphone photo I snapped at Wong Key last December has been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of the Schmap London Guide.
View my [...]

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Do you know a working del.icio.us stemmer?

Monday 2 July 2007

My del.icio.us tags are getting a bit out of control, so I tried using Matt Biddulph's stem identifier, but my bookmark thows a 503.
I did a quick search and I could only find The Amazing del.icio.us Stemmer, suitably renamed by the author The Broken del.icio.us Stemmer.
If you have any suggestions, the comment box (or my [...]

Continue reading Do you know a working del.icio.us stemmer?