Jaffs Trumpet http://www.jaffs.com/blog/ en-US Copyright 2007 Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:45:24 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://election.iloveni.com/ Stephen Loves NI, if you do too and have had it with tribal politics get involved. http://election.iloveni.com/ . It's a pretty difficult process trying to wade through manifestos and seek out the important bits, but that's what we are trying to do. If you have a spare half hour pick a topic and try to break it down to the Yes/No table. Even if we get it wrong, it will stimulate discussion.


]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/02/httpelectionilovenicom.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/02/httpelectionilovenicom.html Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:45:24 +0000 No Alarms and no Surprises The suburbs are killing me - So it's minus 3.5 on my car thermometer. That's quite cold. I have a problem with the city though, I trundle along approximately 100 yards of untreated road until I hit a well lit gritted road which takes me to work in 10 minutes.
I crave a little bit of adventure, I want to feel like I have accomplished something by making it in to work in the morning.
My colleagues have herculian stories of heartache driving from all corners of the countryside, my father drives from Portadown to Derry over the Glenshane every day of the year. I can't compete in this game of 'Commuting Top Trumps'.

The city makes you soft, this is undoubtedly true. Everything is in such easy reach, you become lazy very quickly. Roads are bathed in artificial lights, you see eejits going to the 24 hour Tesco with no lights on at midnight. It lulls you in to a horrible false sense of security, your edges become rounded and your reactions dull. I need to head to the hills this weekend, I do, I do.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/02/no_alarms_and_no_surprises.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/02/no_alarms_and_no_surprises.html Wed, 07 Feb 2007 08:09:45 +0000 Found shopping lists I know it has been done elsewhere, but I intend to make this a feature for 2007, it's my resolution.
Shopping list Number 1 found at Tesco Knocknagoney.

There are a couple of thoughts I have about this, firstly I have no clue what Raffins Ashers is, it's obviously important, it's got a cloud around it.. This list appears to be collated by an elderly person with time on their hands, the items are not that important, and certainly this isn't the 'Big Shop'. So Lucozade Sport seems to be the misfit item here, paper,lottery,crossword puzzle book all fit neatly with my mental image, but Lucozde Sport and perhaps bananas throw me off slightly.
Although the list seems to be written in at least 2 hands, so maybe that explains the misfits.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/01/found_shopping_lists.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/01/found_shopping_lists.html shopping lists Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:58:30 +0000 christmas 2006 So it's all over, Christmas was my usual mix of driving up and down the M1 and eating and drinking copius amounts of food and drink.
In between I spent a day and a half finishing our bathroom. I got professionals to do the tiling and plumbing and in my head they were going to leave the bathroom in perfect order for us to start using it again. I was naive to say the least. We got porcelain tiles, normal tile drill bits dissolve when trying to drill in to the damn things. I ended up getting diamond tipped hollow drill bits at 20 odd quid to the job. Each hole took at least 5 minutes to drill, using a water spray to dampen the bit and keep it cool.
The bath panel took me almost 5 hours to fit, using an electric plane to take a quarter of a mil off each time, I was determined to have no gaps, no easy task when there doesn't appear to be a straight surface in our house.
Here are a few snaps of the finished article.

I got a gorillapod in my christmas box, I have been attaching it to every available surface. It's a great yolk altogether.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/01/christmas_2006.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2007/01/christmas_2006.html Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:41:01 +0000 bedside junk This evening I started measuring up the bathroom floor so I could order some marine ply to cover the banjaxed floorboards before the tiler arrives. My tape measure decided to explode into little pieces. It was a good tape measure it lasted me well. When I bought this ramshackle house 4.5 years ago Dad arrived with a new toolbox and some essentials, the tape measure was from that time.
Anyway I started to look for another that I knew was in a box somewhere. I have a lot of boxes, in a lot of places so I haven't found it yet.
I have always hoarded junk, this collection of stuff was from two boxes on a shelf by the bed. I have many other such boxes, I might just make this a series, if you are lucky. ;-)

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/bedside_junk.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/bedside_junk.html Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:28:44 +0000 Townlands & size I have recently been researching my paternal family tree, luckily we are the first generation to live outside Scotland so the Scottish Ancestry website has been invaluable. Most of the post 1800 records are digitised and indexed and allow partial and soundex searching. This has been useful as my family name changed from Jaffray to Jaffrey.
With a little information from my father I'm now back to the late 1700's. I am building a skinny tree, digging down the paternal line each time.
My family were all farmers, until my Great Grandfather who was a police sergeant in Aberdeen. The interesting thing was that his father and his grandfather both worked the land in the Lonham area of Aberdeenshire and lived in to their 90's. George my great grandfather was the first family member to seek work in the city and died of hypertension in his 60s. There's a pretty simple lesson there I think.
Anyway back to the title, as a sideline to this research I often come across the term townland. This will be familiar to anyone living in Northern Ireland. It's a small geographical unit of land used in Ireland and Scotland , and believed to be of Gaelic or Goidelic origin.
Townlands are always different sizes, and the reason they are is because they were originally based on the area that could support a fixed number of cattle, thus they vary in size depending on the land quality.
From the wikipedia entry for townland; A complicating factor was that in Gaelic times, land was measured in terms of its economic potential rather than in fixed units of measurement: by the number of cattle that an area of pasture land could support, or by the time taken to plough an area of arable land. Therefore the size of an "acre" in this system could vary enormously depending on the quality of the land.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/townlands_size.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/townlands_size.html Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:36:16 +0000 It's direct I suppose I saw this sign in a garden, I had to snap quick in case the owner saw me. Unfortunately I had been messing around with exposure and ISO settings the night before and so the picture is a tad duff. It says If I catch the dog that keeps sh***ing here, I will shove this sign up the owner's arse.


]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/its_direct_i_suppose.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/its_direct_i_suppose.html Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:29:54 +0000 stagnation The blog has been stagnating, I have just opened the authoring page and decided to try to make it part of my routine again.
This website is a useful tool for those interested in excessive postal surcharges to Northern Ireland. http://www.hisdancingleg.com/ni.
Not much to report, life is a lot more stable than this time last year when I was changing jobs. Is that good? I'm not sure; job stability is good for my personality and peace of mind. There's another part of me that craves change.
Just returned from a weekend visiting relatives in Weedon-Bec in Northamptonshire, a jolly nice village. Plenty of opportunity to partake of Real Ale.
Here's a snap from a dander through the country lanes on Sunday.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/stagnation.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/12/stagnation.html Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:51:09 +0000 A modern poem for the day I like this, I've been playing the devil's advocate in recent discussions with an unnamed person arguing the hypocrite line in discussions about fanaticism. This poem shall be my future substitute for such discussions, despite not totally agreeing. This seat atop this fence is damn comfortable. ;-)

If I had my way with violent men
I'd simmer them in oil,
I'd fill a pot with bitumen
And bring them to the boil.
I execrate the terrorist
And those who harbour him,
And if I weren't a moralist
I'd tear them limb from limb.

Fanatics are an evil breed
Whom decent men should shun;
I'd like to flog them till they bleed,
Yes, every mother's son,
I'd like to tie them to a board
And let them taste the cat,
While giving praise, oh thank the Lord,
That I am not like that.

For we should love the human kind,
As Jesus taught us to,
And those who don't should be struck blind
And beaten black and blue;
I'd like to roast them in a grill
And listen to them shriek,
Then break them on the wheel until
They turned the other cheek.

Roger Woddis

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/a_modern_poem_for_the_day.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/a_modern_poem_for_the_day.html Mon, 06 Nov 2006 13:05:59 +0000 txt spk The letters page in the Sunday Times yesterday included a comical letter:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2437548,00.html
The start of the letter was:

I recently sold a mobile phone to an undergraduate via the web. There follows part of an e-mail that he sent to me: “Hya Have you already posted the phone?because if you havent could you please post to xxx instead. As i am at uni in blackpool and my postall adress on ebay is my home adress.”

There are similar enjoyable exchanges going on in the comments section of one of my posts:
http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2004/02/lore_by_rs_thomas.html

Particular highlights include:
* what is beraded with golden dew ment to mean? i aint gta clue lyk need it 4 ma english hmwrk

* give me rs thomas mob no hes hot

* im doing this 4 ma eng, i really liked the peom. R.S Thomas was a gd writer

* i think this poem is quite confusing as i am doing this in english how does Job Davis take pride in his work?
For my test i have put:
"Job Davis takes pride in his work bye getting up early every morning and doing the same job day in day out"
do you think this is a suitable answer for my standard as i am in year 8 and in top set?
many thanks amyrose smith.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/txt_spk.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/txt_spk.html Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:38:55 +0000 If you can't say anything nice... Well after a break of a couple of months, my blog returns with a post taking the piss out of an advert in the Belfast Telegraph. The great thing about a blog is that you can do this with impunity, because if anyone points out the fact that my blog has appalling grammar and punctuation I can delete their comment.
The copy in this advert makes no sense at all. (Click for a larger image.)


]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/if_you_cant_say_anything_nice.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/11/if_you_cant_say_anything_nice.html Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:31:31 +0000 Credit card fraud I logon to my credit card account this morning to make a payment and find 1300 quid of transactions I never made. £690 were unposted transactions, so I caught it on time. It's all been sorted out now, but still it's frustrating.

I had made an Internet purchase two days before the activity started, I'll not name and shame the company because I'm not sure it was them. It's a company I would not normally have trusted with my card, but it was a present and I needed to buy it.
I think it's interesting to see the tester amounts posted to oxfam before the bigger transactions. I think it's about time I started thinking a little more about security.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/09/credit_card_fraud.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/09/credit_card_fraud.html Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:32:15 +0000 MySQL & Number of days between two dates I should not admit how I was investigating doing this, until Marc kindly pointed out the datediff function in MySQL as outlined on this page.
To get the number of days between two dates, be it before or after.
mysql> SELECT DATEDIFF('1997-12-31 23:59:59','1997-12-30');
-> 1

or between a given date and today

mysql> SELECT DATEDIFF('1999-12-31 00:00:00',CURRENT_DATE())
-> -2442
The Date functions docs should have been investigated before now.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/09/mysql_number_of_days_between_t.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/09/mysql_number_of_days_between_t.html Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:36:37 +0000 Northern Ireland's missing demonstrative pronoun In the English language the demonstrative pronouns that we we have are the singular this and that, and the plural these and those. In Shakesperian times the extra one was yon, for example:

You gods that made me man, and sway in love,
That have inflamed desire in my breast
To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree,
Or die in the adventure, be my helps,
As I am son and servant to your will,
To compass such a boundless happiness!

yon celestial tree feels much warmer and more poetic than.
To taste the fruit of that celestial tree.
To taste the fruit of this celestial tree.

We are quite fortunate in Northern Ireland to still have yon and thon in regular use, and it is a demonstrative pronoun that we should nurture and cherish and use often.
For those unfamiliar with the local dialect, it's difficult to think of a suitable example to demonstrate the use, but if I was talking of a shop at the end of the road, I might say:
"You know that wee shop at the end of the road", if I was talking fondly of an old shop I used to visit in years gone by I might say:
Do you mind thon wee shop beside Grannys. Yon man that ran it was a right eejit.

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/08/northern_irelands_missing_demo.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/08/northern_irelands_missing_demo.html Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:23:49 +0000 Esquire Magazine local history lesson Esquire magazine gives us a little bit of local history surrounding the 17th July Nationalist Bonfires on the Shankhill ((sic) Road

]]> http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/08/esquire_magazine_local_history.html http://www.jaffs.com/blog/2006/08/esquire_magazine_local_history.html Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:33:27 +0000