…in which she actually misses geocities. A bit. Ok not that much…
Posted by: skelseh on: February 6, 2010
After having it ready to go for a while, needing only some interesting tid-bits from Dad, I have today finally got my Dad’s look-alike site up and running!
www.keithskelsey.co.uk
Not only does it look spretty swanky, but I’ve also learned how to do all the CSS properly, added meta information, added it to google’s list-of-things-to-bot, got it set up on Analytics and today added a link to the clip of my dear father in BBC1’s ‘The Hustle‘.
Phewf!
It wasn’t without its difficulties either. While getting the coding right and having everything work great is so damn rewarding, trying to get your head around how it should work, or more often why is isn’t working is a flippin’ nightmare!
The other great trial was, quite stupidly, setting up the domain name. For reasons I won’t bore you with I had to go elsewhere other than my hosts for the domain name, after a VERY short google settling on UK-cheapest. That was easy, the hard part came when trying to get my new domain to point people to why I’d uploaded the nice shiny website on my other hosting. Ughhh.
I was going to say that I looked for instructions, but truth was I didn’t even know what terminology to look for. There was Web Forwarding, which did point the domain to my site, but it was just like a signpost to it, so wouldnt carry any meta information with it from the site. Changing the DNS info seemed to sound like it would fit the bill, but the fields you had to fill in were crazy, and I had no idea where I would find the information. Then there was Name Servers, which seemed like a simpler version of the DNS stuff, but I still didn’t know where I’d find the info, and nothing on the site nor google helped. It was like I’d accidentally strayed into France, and was having to order computer parts in a language I only studied for a year.
Eventually I got the right info and got it working, but it was kind of stressful for a while there. Surely I’m not the only non-website-genius to want to set up a site using a specific domain name and not host it in the same place? Yet it really did feel like I needed an HND in How The Internet Works to do it.
Anyway it’s done now. And it’s time to spam the link everywhere. I’m told that helps with google indexing, though it does mean pissing everyone I know off by spamming things about my Dad everywhere again. Oi vey.
www.keithskelsey.co.uk
…in which you all get A*s. Just like we taught you.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 27, 2010
This is going to be a bit of a rant, and so I appologise for it from the off for it’s potentially poorly written nature.
I just read a story on the BBC news website about a Facebook group which Biology A-Level students have set up, complaining about their recent exam paper.
According to the BBC:
“The AQA biology paper taken on Monday has prompted an instant online protest – with allegations that questions did not match what pupils had studied.
“I’ve spent six months working hard… and only one out of the eight questions had any relevance,” writes one student.”
I know how it feels when you open an exam paper, read a few of the questions and realise you don’t actually know what they are talking about. Dread washes over you – you’re going to let your folks down, your teacher, your school, yourself. You start thinking back to your revision, trying to remember what you may have missed out, all the while reading and re-reading the same ambiguous question. But eventually you stop panicking, clear your head and realise that there is actually a lot you can say in that little space.
The only difference is that you don’t know for sure that you are saying the right thing. Probably because this kind of question never came up in one of the test papers.
To me, while it isn’t the fault of the students and is pretty unfortunate for them, this Facebook uproar just highlights something that a lot of us have suspected for some time: kids in the UK are just being taught how to pass exams – how to correctly answer a certain number of a certain type of questions.
It was even like it when I was doing A-Levels, ten years ago. I took Maths and Further Maths, which were mostly modular, involving exams at the end of each term and slightly bigger exams at the end of the school year. At the start of each term we would spend several weeks learning the new topics covered by the module, and at the end of the term we would spend a few weeks just going through past exam paper after past exam paper.
Literally being taught how to answer them.
It even went as far as being told by the teacher which questions to leave out. Most papers asked you to answer a certain number of the questions given to you, obviously designed to allow you to pick the questions that you feel you could answer best. But I remember being told that “if a question on item-we-didn’t-cover comes up, just leave it and answer the other questions, because we’ll have covered them”. It was as if the questions you were able to answer depended on which school you went to, and which topics they felt like teaching.
Surely the idea should really have been to spend the whole term teaching you as much as possible, giving you the choice of what to answer in the exam depending on your own skills and understanding?
I remember discussions following the exams about what we all put in our answers. Very occasionally someone would have answered a question on the paper that you and your friends didn’t, about something that you didn’t cover in classes. “Wow, you must be so clever”, was usually the response. And yeah I guess those people were – they were using the skills and understanding they’d gained over the term to try to understand something slightly different. And usually it worked, if I remember rightly.
But surely that’s how it should work? If you go to university to study the biology of pond weed in southern Guatemala, you expect to come back with enough knowledge to be able to give some answers on pretty much any question about pond weeds in southern Guatemala, not just a very specific eight ones.
Imagine going to your first interview for a role as an exotic pond weed specialist in the Central America section of some huge botanical museum and saying to your interviewer “oh sorry, that one wasn’t in the syllabus. I could tell you something about blahblahblah instead?”
As my colleague here just said, if they can’t answer questions in an exam paper on their subject, then they haven’t learned the subject.
And I know it’s not the students’ fault, but he’s absolutely right. There’s a massive difference between learning about a subject, and learning the answers to some questions.
Playing Trivial Persuit so much that you remember all the questions does not make you an expert on everything.
I’m sorry to everyone younger than me (and to those older than me whom my generation did ‘better’ than), but I really do think that this is why GCSE and A-Level results are improving so much: we’re just getting better at answering the questions, but probably at the expense of understanding the subjects.
I really hope that most of the students not whining on Facebook just read the questions and had a go, and that they are rewarded for it. And despite the fact that it’s the fault of the schools and the way courses are run and not the kids; the whiny ones who didn’t even try should all get Fs.
Big Red Fs.
…in which her dinner is too skinny.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 24, 2010
Turns out, I’ve not been eating enough fat…
Bizarre huh? I’ve been doing this food diary properly for a couple of weeks now, and the other day I was browsing the site’s forums when I saw some info from the nutritionist about fat levels. You see on this site you get both a calorie and a fat limit, and while the aim is not to go over the limit, there isn’t any indication about the minimum you should be eating.
For the calories that doesn’t really matter. My daily limit is just over 1200kcal, and it would be pretty hard not to get close to that without being insanely hungry. My fat limit on the other hand is 46g, and up until recently I’d only been having about 15g a day.
There’s a good reason for this. High fat foods generally equal high calorie. Since I’m counting every last one I’m purposefully picking foods which are low in calories and therefore low in fat, in order to get the most out of my 1200.
For anyone not really clued up on the ways of the calorie, here are a few typical foods and their contents:
- Mug of tea with semi-skimmed milk and 1 sugar - 50 kcal
- 8oz Sirloin Steak - 300 kcal
-
Cadbury’sKraft Dairy Milk – 255 kcal - Pint of Fosters – 195 kcal
- 1 Slice of a large Pizza Hut Pepperoni Pizza – 250 kcal
- Big Mac meal with a coke (not even larged up) – 990 kcal
Big Tasty Meal, larged up, with a coke: only 1555 kcal and 75g of fat.
I never thought I would have to worry about not eating enough fat, but our bodies do need a certain amount to stay healthy. According to the nutritionist this certain amount is no less than 25g, so I’ve been way under lately.
The trick now will be somehow upping my fat intake, while keeping my calorie intake the same. It’s like some frustrating puzzle game. And it’s not just any old fat either – the body can turn left over calories into certain types of fat, but it also needs omega 3 and 6 which it cannot make. So instead of just being able to eat more butter and cheese and stuff, I have to try to eat more nuts, seeds and fish. I never eat those!
I have, however, taken this opportunity to switch back from skimmed to semi-skimmed milk after 3 years of drinking that crap. Thank you, oh God of dieting!
While I’m here, here are a few of my cheap calorie food tips that have helped me keep the calories and the munchies down:
- Caramel Snack-a-Jacks – 50 kcal each
- Flumps – 50 kcal each
- Hartley’s ready to eat jellies – less than 10 kcal per pot
- Tesco fresh soups – Mexican Chilli Bean and Chicken Veg – 135 & 115 kcal per serving and pretty filling!
- Crispy Pancakes – 100 kcal each
- Ryvita Multiseed Thins – 30 kcal each
…in which Inspiration returns as a demon entity.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 20, 2010
After saying I’d given up on them, I got inspiration last night for a new comic. It follows last Sunday’s scary movie night with some friends, where we watched the much hyped spooky movie, Paranormal Activity. Don’t worry if you haven’t yet seen it yet (which you should – in the dark*), the comic doesn’t give much away.
Comic #9 – ParaNormal Activity
Tried a new idea this time around and didn’t outline or colour the background. I think that part of the reason I don’t do these very often now is because they take so flippin long. Sketching them, outlining them, scanning them, colouring them, shading them, adding captions and then displaying them on a new html page (yeah I should look at doing it more dynamically I guess) – it all took a fair bit of time to do.
Rather than stop adding all the silly little details in the background that I can’t seem to not do, I thought I’d just try outlining and colouring the main objects in each scene – hence the scribbliness this time around. I’m glad I did it this way considering the last frame, but as Sod’s Law would have it, it all took ages anyway as I had to reinstall and re-set up my tablet.
It looks okay. Maybe this time it won’t be 5 months before another inspiring idea comes along.
*But try not to see the trailer first. As usual, most of the cool bits are RIGHT THERE.
Thing which may have been interesting once #1
Posted by: skelseh on: January 18, 2010
New years resolution #1, though not listed in order of importance, was to learn how to sew. So on January the… whatever-it-was I got out my never-used sewing machine that I picked up last year for something like £35, bought some cheap tea towels for material and sat down to sew a pretty basic tote bag.
It took me about an hour to get the thing working, only for it to fail again two hems into the bag construction. Never buy a cheap sewing machine from Tesco. Ok you could probably have told me that. Bull hell, I thought that even a cheap sewing machine would be able to… well… sew.
Not wanting to give up and wait for a replacement machine like a normal person I decided to hand-stitch the rest of the bag. This was not the wisest decision, as my poor fingers would tell you, right before telling you that I probably ought to own at least one thimble. In any case, here’s the result:
Tote Bag v1.0
Not bad from afar. It’s not until you look close can you see just how bad I suck at this.
Learn2Sew lol
But there you go. I consider this step one toward acheiving this goal. Step two is probably to repair/replace the sewing thread-tangling machine. For now though I can at least take my canvas (or other suitable alternative) bag to the supermarket. Though I won’t be carrying anything heavy or breakable in it. Maybe just cotton balls or prawn crackers.
Tim Minchin, by the way, is awesome.
…in which she did, umm, a thing… with the thing..?
Posted by: skelseh on: January 16, 2010
The more regular of Human Humdrum readers may have noticed that after 8 mildly amusing strips, I appear to have abandoned the regular comic gimmick that I started at the beginning of this blog. Contrary to what I just told my good friend in the States, this is not simply because I ran out of pencils, or even because I ran out of funny visual ideas. In fact I have plenty of funny visual ideas, but the problem lies in my inability to not fucking forget them instantaneously.
I forget a lot of good ideas. I’d love to be one of those studious looking people you see who always have a notebook with them and it’s always overflowing with interesting notes and doodles, but I’ve tried keeping one and failed on many occasions. I just don’t like my handwriting enough to keep any of it.
I’ve tried making notes on my new PDA phone, but I still hate the fussy interface and faffy loading times. Yep – I’m so impatient that I can’t even wait 5 milliseconds to talk gibberish to myself.
When I’m at work and I think of something I need to remember when I get home I tend to jot it in an email and send it to one of my personal accounts. I spend enough time sitting at my computer that this should be a good idea. Unfortunately I don’t check my email nearly enough for it to be at all effective, especially now I’ve started logging in to find that the only person who has emailed me… is myself.
When I do eventually remember whatever idea it was that I had, I find I’ve lost interest or enthusiasm for writing about it/doing it properly. The result of this is that instead of having a bank of really good ideas that I’m excited about, I just have a scrappy list of things that might have been interesting once.
Unless I forget, the next few posts will be about those things. Apologies in advance if you are unamazed.
A less negative term often used for forgetful is Distracted, making the assumption that a person forgets things because they have a high level of concentration… on something else. Indeed there is a whole global association dedicated to ‘Distracted People’, though how they ever got a complete and working website is a mystery. Einstein himself was often referred to as ‘distracted’ and, while I’d hate to be so bold as to directly imply that he and I are alike, we do both also have ridiculous hair. Relatively speaking.
…in which there’s no such thing as bad weather, only a bad attitude.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 12, 2010
I’ve already failed at New Year’s Resolution #3: Keep the House Tidy. It seems that, while it was an easy and gratifying task when off work, now I’m back to spending 40% of my day in the office it’s not so easy. Or fun. My 5-6 hours of free time at home in the evenings is FAR too precious to spend picking stuff up.
But that’s ok – all is not lost. Resolutions 1,2 and 4 are still on track. Though I still hate work, had an enormous pizza yesterday, and found out the sewing machine I bought last year does everything it’s supposed to except sew.
Snow-wise, Banburyshire is still all pretty and white, despite a major thawing yesterday. The sun wasn’t out, yet everything was frantically dripping and the height of the snow went from the 4 or 5 inches we’d been left with since Wednesday’s blizzards to about 2cm (yes, I’m mixing my units. If you’re confused find a ruler). Like watching the saddest paint dry, I gazed out of the window willing it to stay longer. Call me crazy; but I could easily put up with this for another week or so. That could be because I live in town and am able to walk to most places I need to go, but I like to think that it’s also to do with my super positive attitude and my surviving-the-cold common sense.
Skels’ tips for surviving the snow both physically and mentally:
1. Don’t drive anywhere. Really. Unless you are one of those people who really enjoys snow-driving and/or knows how to do it WELL, don’t bother. I realise that in other places a few inches of snow doesn’t grind the country to a halt, but this is England: we’re never prepared, and we’re never equipped. Even if by some miracle you do make it to your destination without getting stuck on or sliding across non-gritted roads, you will get there late, tired, stressed and grumpy. There’s a reason that the MET office say “do not travel unless absolutely necessary”, and I really don’t think that going to work (which will probably be a half-empty office anyway) counts as absolutely necessary.
2. Keep a full freezer. Not driving anywhere does present problems for survival after a few days and if you live out in the sticks both you and your local shop will probably start to run out of fresh groceries pretty quickly. Thankfully my freezer has been jam-packed with various left-overs, so I haven’t had to worry about stocking up (aside from picking up a loaf of bread and some milk) for about two weeks. I’m thankful of this because not only did I get out of driving to the supermarket, but I also got out of trying to do said shopping amongst all the crazy panic-buyers that have been out and about over the past week.
3. Don’t wear wellies. Wellies are RUBBISH in the cold. They are thin, have no insulation whatsoever, and have a huge gaping hole at the top for the warmth to escape from – yes even if you wear 3 pairs of socks. Your toes are likely to be the first thing to go numb if you go out into the snow in wellies. I bought a pair of Hi-Tec waterproof walking boots (turns out they are a kid’s design!!!) about 2 years ago for the bargain price of £40 and I have been delighted with them in both the cold and the wet. For hours my feet remain dry and toasty, and I don’t even have to wear special socks. The grip tends to be much, much better too. Couple good boots with dressing up nice and warm: thick trousers, gloves, hat, scarf (or better – a Buff), long coat and it makes a huge difference to be able to spend a good few hours out there and not feel the cold. You don’t get grumpy and miserable and the best part is you don’t start to resent the weather. Hopefully it means you can get to the shops for additional supplies, so that when you’re at home you only really have to worry about the fact that there’s no decent telly to watch.
4. Go for a walk. If you’re not driving anywhere it might be tempting to just stay in the house going stir-crazy, cursing the snow for keeping you at home. But it’s really not that bad and can actually be really nice to be out in and sometimes a lot of fun, as long as you make sure you’ve followed tip 3. So wrap up warm, grab a friend and head out down some footpath away from the yukky slushy roads. Take a camera and enjoy the scenery and serenity. Make the most of it – that’s what life’s about after all.
Extraordinary weather for extraordinary people?
And if you really aren’t a cold weather person, don’t bring the rest of us down by constantly moaning about it. Please.
…in which she’s owed.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 7, 2010
In addition to the nice hand-made and thoughtful Christmas gifts I gave out this year, I also did a fair bit of Christmas shopping online, in order to avoid having to go into town and get trampled by crazy crowds. My boyfriend, dull as he can be, this year asked Santa Claus for a torch. A pocket-sized torch. A £65 pocket-sized torch. My reaction was that this torch had better be able to light up the night sky like it were daylight and, to be fair, it’s not far off.
The specific £65 pocked-sized torch he asked for is this: the Fenix TK12 LED Flashlight. It has a number of modes, ranging from normal torch light – apparently around 5 “lumens” – up to retina-burningly bright which is 225 lumens. On Christmas night we shone it out of the back window to see just how bright that was, and we were lighting up the houses on the other side of the park.
It also – for some mental reason – comes with a strobe function, which my boyfriend’s father thought would be a great thing to hold the button down on during Boxing Day dinner. It felt a bit like my eyeballs were trying to retract up into my brain.
At the moment he insists on wearing it on his belt at all times. Yes - like a lightsaber.
But this post wasn’t supposed to be about the torch. This post is supposed to be a whine about buying the damn thing.
Now, I like to save money at Christmas. I’ve never been into the spending hundreds of pounds on people thing that so many people seem to like to do, and then like even more to complain about come January. So to that end, I did a bit of googling to see if I could find the torch a bit cheaper. Eventually I did – a reputable looking power seller on eBay was selling one in the States for about £20 less. It was only November the 18th at this point, so it had plenty of time to arrive by Christmas. I made the purchase.
Unfortunately, after two ignored emails, opening an eBay dispute and a PayPal dispute, I still don’t have that torch, and I still haven’t heard anything about it from the power seller I so stupidly put my trust in. Vince got his present though: 4 days before Christmas Day I panic bought the £65 one from the UK Fenix website, and was amazed when it actually arrived on the morning of Christmas Eve. But I’m still £45 + shipping out of pocket, and the eBay seller is still ignoring me.
You might think that I shouldn’t be surprised, that buying anything on eBay is dodgy. But that’s all just paranoia mostly, stemming from a few naive buyers who didn’t read the smallprint, or didn’t check the feedback. It makes me quite sad really because, aside from a couple of Nigerians* trying to scam me out of electronic goods a few years ago, I have always had very positive experiences using eBay, and this guy’s feedback was 99.4% positive.
I’ve just sent the offenders another message through the PayPal dispute page advising them that if I don’t hear from them in the next few days, I am escalating the claim. I don’t know what happens then, but it sounds exciting.
Unlike – as I realise – this post 
* Not stereotyping, generalising or being prejudice – they were actually Nigerian.
…in which her cold is officially snapped.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 6, 2010
Anyone who drove to work today in my area of the country is officially an idiot. And actually probably deserves to need to be pushed up a sludgy hill whilst over-revving. Honestly – nutcases. Perhaps those people with 4×4s are (for once) not the stupid ones, but it’s still pretty crazy all the same.
You see here in Banburyshire it has snowed.
We’ve got about 15cm of the stuff covering everything, and apparently Oxfordshire ran out of grit, so none of the roads are clear. The M40 only has one lane open, and I think it’s just starting to snow again.
Now I am going to spam you with photographs.
We also watched a bunch of cars slide in and out of our road from the top floor of the office. It was great fun until one of the grumpy senior people made a comment about shutting the blinds. Four of the lads from Sales have gone out in it, armed with shovels, because one of them had to abandon his car at the bottom of the hill. He drove in from Coventry in his rear wheel drive BMW. I’m surprised he made it this far.
While I made it into the office on foot with relative ease, I think I’m going to take the afternoon off as holiday. I’m still a big kid and I want to play in it =D
…in which she is insecure.
Posted by: skelseh on: January 4, 2010
There are two enormous issues with the new office layout.
- This floor is now about 50% women, as opposed to the previous 5%. This means that there are always people in the ladies loos. I can’t pee if I think someone can hear. It’s weird. I also have a real problem with women who use the ladies as some kind of break chat room. It’s a pee room. For peeing. PEE OFF.
- One of the women is a stunner. Perfect figure, perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect make-up. She’s even the perfect age. I feel properly ugly and fat for the first real time in three years. Oh my god she’s even using hand cream. I am a dehydrated ugly old hag. Boo hoo!
Insecure OCD whine over.
