I ticked the wrong box

Sainsburys have X-rated cereals apparently.  I didn’t see any actual X-rated material though.

Tescos however did have X-rated food, but did not have a warning like Sainsburys did.

On client sites I don’t get a desk phone. I like desk phones.

In newbury Waitrose has a poor selection of sushi. In Canary Wharf there is an itsu. I like sushi.

Old news, but new for me today.

LinkedIn have released an iPhone app.  I’m a big fan and user of their app, and I think keeping up to date has just become a lot easier with this iPhone app.

http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/09/16/post-2-2/

(and if you’re interested - http://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishrickerby)

I had a very confusing situation today with a multipart form that was for uploading a picture to a new web service I’m working on.

In Safari the form upload worked.  Even in Internet Explorer 6 the form upload worked (after I fixed the dodgy MIME-type that IE passes through for JPG images - image/pjpeg for those interested).

The form I was trying to submit had the multipart attribute set correctly, and also had some javascript to disable the file selection, form submission button, and show a spinner to indicate that something is happening, and they don’t try and submit the file twice if they’re sending in a large image.

My submit tag orginally looked like this (Ruby on Rails)

<%= submit_tag 'Upload Photo', :class => "formbutton", :id => "submit-button", :onClick => "$('upload-form').submit();Form.disable('upload-form');Effect.toggle('footnote', 'appear', {duration: 0});Effect.toggle('spinner', 'appear', {duration: 0});" %>

I was very confused as it did work in those other browsers, but not in Firefox.

The key to fixing this was to add return false; to the end of the javascript statement…

<%= submit_tag 'Upload Photo', :class => "formbutton", :id => "submit-button", :onClick => "$('upload-form').submit();Form.disable('upload-form');Effect.toggle('footnote', 'appear', {duration: 0});Effect.toggle('spinner', 'appear', {duration: 0});return false;" %>

What I find particularly confusing about this is that everything I read on the “return false;” statement leads me to believe that this form should not be submitted - however - return true does not work (500 Internal Server Error returned).  But what the hey - it works.

Group Manager of Enforcement

and it’s not what you’re thinking…

Via: PharmaTimes

Carling has a campaign here - “probably the best beer in the world”. I found tonight they have been beaten in terms of finding marketing phrases that suck.

Companies here seem to resign themselves to positions in the marketplace that may or may not be all they can acheive. Seems to me to be wrong that a company has an attitude that being inferior is OK.

Air New Zealand has recently launched a new campaign. What makes me chuckle, and angry is the folllowing ad:

My response: If you say I can demand it during take-off and landing, why did I have to fly for around 26 hours with you people and have no on-demand service, after the flight was delayed for around 13 hours?

I guess that’s what you get when your national operator turns into a what is effectively a budget airline. Never flying Air New Zealand again.

I’ve recently transferred some funds internationally. To do this I needed a special account code so that the bank I’m sending money to know which of the accounts they hold should receive it. This number is a conventional looking account number, prefixed with a country code, and a checksum value. There is also a website that checks them - http://www.apacs.org.uk/payments_industry/ibans_5.html

Putting in a country that they can’t check the actual account number for causes their little javascript application to unleash a serious dissing.

Ouch!

BTW - Sorry for the Rodney Dangerfield knock-off quote. He’s awful.

I was sitting at a desk last week and overheard a man yelling down a phone to someone else that “People aren’t an asset. They don’t appear on a balance sheet”. I agree with that view - not because of the strict accounting definition of an asset, but because of what I believe people in companies should mean (either consciously or subconsciously) when humans are called assets.

Companies refer to humans as assets for 2 reasons. (1) To make employees feel good and (2) because of the value they create for and contribute to the business.

I believe humans are assets to companies, but they are not assets of the companies. The actual asset belongs to the individual - their time - and they trade it for money. The company gets the output of that trade, but the value of the asset remains in the power of the individual.

They won’t appear on a balance sheet, but the work they do with their time that they have swapped for money is the “asset” in the eyes of the business. That appears on the books in the form of IP, physical goods, inventions, patents, or money received for the company on-selling that time (like the work I do).

me: Countees isn’t in google yet

someone else: You have to put it in there?

me: Yes, I have to tell them about it.

someone else: Don’t they just find it?

me: How would they find it?

someone else: Google.

BTW - check out countees.co.uk - wear your UK county on your chest.  More about this soon.