An April Fool’s Special, it seems.

Never mind all the feeble speculation in the media about who should be the next Who (I favour Moira Stewart, or maybe my father in law – or both), the question we should be asking is this – who will be the next Pope?
I’d love to have a go at a job like that. Firstly, I’d issue a few papal edicts for a bit of a laugh – things such as "the pious shall hop on their left foot on Tuesdays" and "the Lord favours those who wear blue socks". But, after that, I’d dismantle the whole ridiculous edifice and give the accumulated wealth that the Catholic church possesses to those who really need it.
What would you do if you were in the Papal shoes?

More planting last night – sage (Salvia officinalis Berggarten), Penstemon barbatus Peter Catt, catmint (Nepeta faassenii), some Ranunculus, some Gaillardia and a Salvia nemorosa variety. Monty seems to have spotted the catmint already, but I’m not sure that he knows what to make of it. Perhaps he will let it grow a little before he sits on it/eats it/shreds it.

Who knew that it was so easy to set up a political party? According to this BBC News article, all you need is two people, a constitution and £150! So, if anyone wants to join with me and form The Arty Farty Party (and has £150 laying around), then let me know. I will, of course, be Supreme Leader For Life and you can be Chief Minion. Our policies will have a broad appeal and include

• free Smarties on the NHS
• beer hydrants in every street
• an increase in spending on public gardens
• twenty seven new bank holidays

Any other policy ideas?

Google Gulp! With a bit of self-parody, it seems:

Not sure what the EU Constitutional Treaty really says? Confused by the rhetoric and argument emanating from politicians? Then download the full text, all 485 pages of it, in a handy 2MB PDF file.
And I’ll hear no more discussion of the matter until you’ve read it all!

Karol Wojtyla, RIP. What’s the reckoning that the Beeb had the obit ready some time ago?

Thoughtful article from Justin Webb.

Bystander on solicitors and policemen.

I’ve just done the WordPress upgrade to 1.5. Things are a bit weird – please be patient and I’ll try and resume normal service soon.
UPDATE: comments are down. This, I know for sure, is due to the fact that I have separate style sheets for the main pages and for the comments pages, and now they use a single template – or something. Either way, something is borked. If you want to talk to me, then email.
FURTHER UPDATE: No, I was wrong about the cause. The problem is to do with the permalinks. Now to fix it…
FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE: Comments are still not working. There was a problem with permalinks that now seems to be resolved (I’ve had to prefix all the page links with index.php/ – surely that can’t be right??), but the comments are still not working, even though I’m using the two php scripts supplied with the classic theme (a recommendation made in the forums). I’m feeling mildly frustrated.

Well, the latest is this – the comments are working and the style sheet now shows up on the individual pages. Good-o.
However, the list of categories in the sidebar is no longer in alphabetical order.
Moreover, the links to the categories or archives only take you to the front page, although the URI displayed is correct.
And I still have to insert index.php/ in every URI, in spite of having mod_rewrite on 34sp. I’m confused and tired and more than a bit fed up. Suggestions would be very welcome.

Episode 17 now has subtitles for those that do not speak Bulgarian.

I’ve fixed the problem with the categories links not working.
The categories link list is still in the wrong order, though I believe that I’m using the correct PHP script to call them in alphabetical order.
The month archive links are still broken.

Laser Envy game.

The only outstanding issue is related to the archive links not functioning. I think this may be related to .htaccess not being updated by WP, even though it is CHMOD=666 and mod_rewrite is available. As a result, I can’t use fancy permalinks. Others have the exact same problem. I think that this might be caused AllowOverride being disabled in the httpd.conf file, but I don’t have access to that file on 34sp.com in order to check. I’m also concerned that setting AllowOverride to all would create a security hole (although I’m happy to be corrected in my assumptions by anyone that knows more than me).
Suggestions?

How Brian met Julia – altogether now: "ahhh!"

Closer-to-Death Kenny is 41 today.
Sorry, that was unkind and probably uncalled for – but funny nonetheless.

ATV/Powersled racing game

BBC election blog:

Also:

Could prove to be informative and amusing. However, other election blogs are available.

I’ve found a new problem – the category archives only show the most recent posts when called, and not the entire history of posts in that category.
UPDATE: that’s due to some missing PHP from my index.php file, code that was not required under the old version. Bad update instructions, methinks. I’ll need to figure out what code is required and add it, but it needs to generate "next page" and "previous page" links.
No solutions to any of the other problems yet, and I’m getting increasingly fed up. I’ve asked 34sp.com to check the status of the AllowOverride in my httpd.conf file, but I’ve not yet had a reply from them.

A short animation all about mannirs (work safe). Lovely.

Brighton stadium plans are a factor in the election in the region. Of course, given Brighton’s recent form, the Withdean might well be big enough for a Conference side. Gah.

Knockout Greg – playing Blues on the Farm this year.

I’m told that all these posts about my WP woes are boring. Sorry.
Anyway, following advice and suggestions received, I’ve employed a plugin and some new code to fix the category archive pages so that they now display 500 posts (setting it to 999 posts caused a server timeout). I’ve also added links to the previous and next posts, as well as the home page, to each individual post page, which should make Gert and Brian happy.
Now I have to add some code so that when you get to the foot of each page of 500 posts in the category archives, you can click a link to view the next 500 (yes, a couple of my categories have that many posts!).
I have also yet to resolve the non-functioning date archives. Suggestions on that one would be very welcome.

I’m a week late with this, but I’ve only just heard – Alan Bloom, possibly the greatest perennial plants advocate and enthusiast of the 20th century, has died aged 98.
Alan Bloom was a great influence on me as I came into the horticulture industry. I’ve read most of his books, including the excellent Plantsman’s Progress, which covers not only his background in horticulture, but also his relationships with parents and children, touching on Fenland life. His enthusiasm and passion for perennials, illustrated by the way he developed a large perennial-growing nursery at a time when shrubs and low-maintenance gardens were the fashion, as well as his co-founding of the Hardy Plant Society, were rewarded with an MBE as well as the two highest honours in horticulture – the Veitch Memorial Medal and the Victoria Medal of Honour.
He cut a slightly eccentric figure. His hooped earrings and long flowing hair marked him out as slightly different from most (rather staid) horticulturalists. He had a passion for plants matched only by his passion for steam power (he collected many engines for his museum at Bressingham, Norfolk). He was also a Quaker and, judging by his autobiography, something of a rebel who was not afraid to stand up against the "perceived wisdom". He did much to popularise perennials, both through his media appearances and also through his development of the "island bed" technique of displaying them, and it is probably fair to say that I might not be doing what I am doing today if it had not been for his efforts in this field.
There were to be special open days of his Dell Garden at Bressingham Hall this summer for the HPS. Knowing his great age, I had planned to attend in order to meet the great man before he died. Unfortunately, that opportunity is now lost. Instead, a tribute day will be held there on 21 June to celebrate his life in the garden he created, a garden which features some of the 200 or so plants that he bred and developed. Some of those plants are growing at my parents’ nursery, and I’ll be planting one or two in the garden here.

From this week’s Horticulture Week:

The article does not go on to say what "doing your own thing" actually means. Suggestions?

When I’m working at the table in the conservatory, I often have some company on the sofa behind me.

As you can see, today I’ve been joined by Monty – Treacle has retreated to the other sofa, in the living room. Neither of them are much company, to be honest, spending their time asleep. The only interaction occurs when they get up for lunch.

Incidentally, Hels and I have noticed that Monty has developed curly tips to his whiskers.

Split ends?

I’m stumped. I want to put "next page" and "previous page" links at the foot of each page. I know I should be using posts_nav_link. Where should I put it? My current code looks like this:
[the main body of the grayblog page]
</div>

<div class="sidebar">
[the sidebar part of the page]
Help?

Incidentally, I’ve turned off the anti-spam plugin that I was using because it was generating false positives. Fingers crossed.

• comment notification doesn’t work. It’ll send the notification to any address other than graybo@grayblog.co.uk – totally mystified by that one
• monthly archives not working – totally mystified. This is, in my estimation, the most serious fault. If I can’t remedy it, I may look at an alternative CMS. Ugh. May be related to the next problem.
• pretty permalinks not working. Related: .htaccess not updating, in spite of being CHMOD 666. Totally mystified.
• still haven’t figured out how to get previous and next page links at the foot of the index page and, by extension, the archive pages. This is due to me not knowing enough/any php.

Bah.

Use WP? Post links to Amazon (UK, US or any of the others, for that matter)? Then you need this plugin.

Thanks to Gordon, I seem to have kicked the .htaccess generation into gear on my WP installation, by CHMODing to 777 then back to 666. I shouldn’t need to do that, but there you go.
Naturally, all this has done is reveal a whole bunch of other problems. If I modify the permalink structure, .htaccess updates, then I get an internal server error if I go to the home page or the WP admin pages. So, apologies to those people who have been trying to look here today and have had error messages.

I’ve taken a look in my server error logs and I notice two things – firstly, when .htaccess updates, the following error is generated:

[Fri Apr 8 11:48:45 2005] [error] mod_gzip: TRANSMIT_ERROR:32

Secondly, when I try to call a page, the internal server error caused is as follows:

[Fri Apr 8 11:52:37 2005] [alert] [client 81.130.49.105] /var/www/vhosts/grayblog.co.uk/httpdocs/.htaccess: RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression '^?p=category/(.+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$'\n

So, these leads to the following questions:

1. what is a transmit error:32?
2. what causes it?
3. how do I prevent it?
4. is it related to the server’s inability to compile the .htaccess file?
5. is there something I can do to make the file compile even with the transmit error?

There is nothing in the WP Codex on this (at least, nothing that I can find) and nobody seems to have raised a similar problem in the forums – so I have opened a discussion here. One user states that he/she had the same problem with the compile error and resolved this by deleting the permalink entry from the database via their server’s database admin, and then going to the admin page and resetting it on the permalinks screen. I’ve tried that, but it does not solve the problem.
I’m out of my depth on this problem, I must admit. And my tax return has arrived through the post this morning (joy of joys!), so my mood is not great at the moment. Time for coffee and toast, I think, before I get back to the PFE accounts.

I told you that they aren’t much company…

At least they’re both here today.

This company make very nice foods. I particularly recommend the Frutos Secos – deep fried maize. Yum. Available in Borough Market.

We visited Gosport and Portsmouth this weekend to see my brother at his girlfriend’s house. These days, one thing stands out, begging to be photographed. I took a whole bunch, and reckon this to be the best, not for any technical reason but simply because it was caught in sunlight at that moment with dark clouds behind. The Spinnaker Tower:

Gordon gives a thoughtful discussion of the Spoil Your Vote campaign. I strongly feel that we should have a system in this country that is similar to that in Sweden – compulsory voting for all citizens (subject to a fixed financial penalty and combined with the introduction of more accessible secure voting methods) but with the addition of a "none of the above" option. Not that that idea on its own would solve the problem of people spoiling their paper or abstaining through laziness or ignorance. It is, at least in part, the duty of politicians to motivate the public to vote. In some instances, a minimum turnout is required for a vote to become valid – so it is not only the responsibility of the parties to win a majority of the vote but also their responsibility to motivate people into placing their X. Perhaps a combination of obligatory voting to motivate the people and a minimum "turnout" in the form of papers showing a cross against a candidate instead of abstention to motivate the candidates might, when taken together, lead to more meaningful results.

A rather beautiful yellow butterfly has just fluttered by the window.

That is all.

Pitchfork interviews Autechre. Time to get my Autechre CDs out. (Thanks Bob).

At least he killed it properly this time. Now they are hunting around the conservatory, trying to find where it is hidden (I opened the door, and sent its corpse into low orbit over the pub garden).

Footie without the sweaty.

Labour -8
Conservative -9
	Liberal Democrat 17
UK Independence Party -9
Green -4

You should vote: Liberal Democrat.
Take the test at Who Should You Vote For?

Hmmm. But I don’t agree with PR, which is a bit of a sticking point with the LibDems for me.
link via Steve.

For reasons known only to the little gremlins that inhabit my skull, I’ve had Airport by The Motors on my brain all morning. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.

I’ve spent much of the day working on PFE’s accounts for the year ending 31 December 2004, and I’ve achieved quite a lot:

• tallied the entire year’s expenditure records and reconciled them with the bank statements, for transactions in Sterling and in euro (PFE is a dual-currency business – I leave my accountant to reconcile it all into a single financial statement suitable for the tax man and Companies House)
• tallied the additional personal investment made by me in 2004 (not insignificant, it turns out)
• tallied the income records for the year (again, in two currencies)

I’ve still got several things to do, most notably to get my mileage records for 2004 into a format that is suitable for presentation to the powers-that-be (i.e. not scribbled on the back of an envelope) and compile the list of creditors and debtors at year end. In summary, performance is in line with expectations. The turnover is around twice that of the preceding year, and is expected to continue to grow in 2005. Additional revenue streams will come online in the current year and it is projected that PFE will break even in the current year, depending on trading conditions.
Of course, the main thing is that PFE retains the confidence of its principal creditor (me). I expect that the full financial report will be ready by the end of next month when it shall be presented to the AGM of shareholder (note singular).

"Like something from the Jetsons". I’m not sure if "Googie" is a proper technical term. I’m also not sure if all the examples cited on this site really fit under that heading either. Still, well worth a look. via linkbunnies.

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the award of the George Cross to the people of Malta in recognition of their bravery in the face of consistent attacks from the Italian and German forces in World War 2. It was the first time that the award had not been made to an individual. It is hard to imagine how they coped with six months of continuous air raids, living underground for long periods in caverns they had cut from the limestone themselves and surviving on very meagre rations. How would you cope with that?
You may not be aware that the aerial defence of Malta was initially led solely by just three aged Gloster Gladiator biplane aircraft – no Spitfires or Hurricanes here – that were nicknamed Faith, Hope and Charity. The bravery and determination of their pilots and ground crew resulted in the attackers losing several aircraft and consequently believing that the island had substantial airborne defences. As a result, there was no marine invasion of the island, which surely would have been successful and would undoubtedly have changed the course of the war in the Mediterranean.

VXR Racer.

*ring ring* *ring ring*

PFE, good afternoon.
Hello, can I speak to…. pppfffft *snigger* *snigger*

*click*

1471 – number withheld. Obviously a slow Friday in some call centre somewhere.

It’s a bit of a one-sided battle, to be fair. As far as we can work out, spoils are divided equally between Monty and Treacle, so far. When we got in this evening, a small shrew-shaped gift was waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I’ve been married for exactly six months today. By a strange coincidence, the woman I live with got married on the same day. Fancy that!

As our first anniversary will be paper, half-cards should be sent to the usual address.

I had great plans for all the things that I was going to achieve yesterday. Unfortunately, one job took far longer than I had anticipated, so I didn’t get through my entire list. Who knew that painting trellis was so arduous? I had it marked down as a two hour task, but instead it took nearly six!
Anyway, yesterday Hels and I

• painted the trellis and gate
• painted the shed door
• sanded down three of our new (old) garden chairs ready for painting
• mowed the lawn
• planted several plants – a Spiraea, Veronica, Veronicastrum, Eryngium and Anemone
• cleaned the house
• did the recycling
• cooked lovely duck in port, orange and green peppercorn marinade
• collapsed in a heap at the end of it all.

In other news, things have taken a step forward(ish) with regard to the sale of H’s flat. We now have a pile of paper. Yay.

For those who, like me, are considering not voting or spoiling their paper in the forthcoming election: Not Apathetic.
I’m under some pressure from my wife to "vote properly". I can understand her reasons for this, and feel strongly that I have a moral responsibility to attend the polling station. But without a "none of the above" option, is it right that I should put my vote against a party or candidate whose policies I do not support?

Or in my case, measure at all, purchase once. I need a fitting to go on to our outside tap so that I can connect a hose to it. It "looks like" a three-quarter inch fitting. So I "borrow" a suitable fitting from Dad. Too big. So today I purchased a half inch fitting. Too small. If I’d bothered to measure it, I’d know that it is five-eights. Bah.

Yesterday, Treacle brought a mouse to us. In bits. Niiice.

This morning, I have mostly been dribbling and spilling tea down my front.
Maybe because I’m so excited about our new watering can.

Cityscape. My best score so far is 36/60.

This story made me laugh until there were tears in my eyes. Why would anyone toothbrush their caravan?

Google Maps has been launched in beta for the UK and seems to be potentially useful (although I’m not sure about the map on the launch page, which shows the position of Great Britain relative to Newfoundland!). However, a quick look at Ruralville revealed several roads depicted on the map that simply do not exist (they are either footpaths or private drives and farm tracks – I looked at some nearby MoD land on the map and found tracks displayed that are definitely off-limits).
I’ve also tried the driving directions feature, using the journey between home and my parents as the test. It seems that Google doesn’t know the difference between "left", "right" and "straight ahead" – there are several glaring errors in the directions offered to me. I’ll stick to the AA driving directions qwhich are generally accurate, even if their journeyt times are almost always hopelessly optimistic.

Apparently, the white ones are not white chocolate – swizz.

Notepad Invaders. via Sore Eyes.

High Wheels game. Potentially infuriating.

Yesterday I took the day off (or most of it) and went with Hels and my parents to The Savill Garden in Windsor Great Park. Plants do a great job of looking very phallic at this time of year, none more so than the skunk arums, in this case Lysichiton camtschatcense.

Michael Howard says that, if the Tories are elected, they will raise the Stamp Duty threshold to £250,000. He stated today that, when Labour came to power, the average house purchased produced a Stamp Duty bill of £900. Today, that bill is £1800. His proposal would reduce that bill to nil for all houses below £250,000.
I think this policy is flawed.
The principal reason that individuals, couples and "hard working families" struggle to purchase a home is not Stamp Duty, but spiralling house prices. At present, there is a definite pressure on prices of properties around the Stamp Duty threshold that was announced by Gordon Brown in the budget. Properties that might be offered at £160,000, which includes a lot of smaller and first-time buyer properties are actually being sold at or below the "150,000 threshold. Dramatically increasing the threshold might save those families a few hundred pounds in Stamp Duty, but it will take the lid off of prices and ultimately cost them more.
The real problem is with housing policy. The Labour party proposes to offer more low-cost and subsidised housing to this ridiculous group known as "key workers". This does nothing other than add fuel to the market by taking many low-cost homes out of the general market pool, denying them to all the other "hard working families" who work in offices, shops and so on, but are not key workers. As any half-witted economist will tell you, reducing the supply always has the result of increasing prices.
In my opinion, the way to make housing affordable to more people is not to tinker with Stamp Duty. Abolish it, perhaps – that would have a zero effect on the market – but I don’t see HMG abandoning that source of revenue. The way to make housing more affordable is not to subsidise certain groups when they purchase property – that, in fact, has the opposite effect. The only way to improve the position of house buyers is to increase the supply of housing by relaxing or changing planning laws and increasing the number of new homes being built, as well as encouraging older homes to become available in the market again. Increased taxation on second homes that are not rented out (we must encourage a strong rental market) would also discourage second home ownership or alternatively raise revenue from those who are the owners of multiple properties that are denied to the general market.
To me, it seems so obvious, yet neither Labour nor the Conservatives can do more than make policies that generate cheap pulbicity.

.eu domains to be available by year end.
PFE will be applying for one of these, although to be in the first wave, you must hold a trademark or some other intellectual property – a sensible move, I think, to stop cybersquatting. I’ve been thinking about trademarking my company’s name, and now seems to be the time to do that.
There is a FAQ here about the new TLD.
You can find out about EU trademarks here.

This looks highly illegal, but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless.

Today is St George’s Day. It is also my wife’s birthday. So expect quiet here as we spend the day doing birthday things.

Global House Connection will be broadcasting again this week (today), for the first time since 6 March, at a new time of 4pm Pacific (midnight UK) and Lars has publicly promised me that they will (at least try to) be weekly. They are also working on podcasts for subscribers. Announcement here.

Sir John Mills died yesterday at the age of 97. I always think of him saying something like "you simply have to, old bean, you simply have to!" or some other such earnestness whilst sitting in the tail gunner’s seat of a World War 2 bomber. His characters always seemed to be earnest. Perhaps that was my own misconception.
I remember one evening, many years ago, going into the Bell pub in Chichester. The Bell is directly opposite the Festival Theatre. As we walked in, my friend Louise was in a bit of rush, not really looking where she was going, and careered straight into John Mills as he was coming out. Neither party was injured.

BBC Obvious.

Surprisingly difficult game.

Tobby – ideal relaxation for when you’re having a coffee just as you’ve got home from driving through the driving rain all day. Rescue the dog tied to the rocket by peeing on the fuse. Wacky Japanese(?) fun.

Unscientific BBC survey suggests that fewer people are putting up party posters in the run up to this election than in previous years. There certainly seem to be plenty around here, although red seems a rare colour.
Interestingly, party political posters are exempt from the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 (my favourite piece of legislation to flout, as regular readers will know) provided they are removed not more than 14 days after the election.

Do you use Outlook? Hopeless at backing up? Then use this plugin to automate backups of your Outlook folders. How handy.

Expect quiet here for a few days whilst I visit Dutchland.