All posts by Ryan Cullen

Tidy Slugs

Plugins

I’ve been playing about with WordPress plugins all day, and have created (more like stolen and modified a small amount) Tidy Slugs.
This plugin tries to catch a few of the random stuff that WordPress misses when I make the post slug.

For example if my post title was:
Ryan's Tidy Slugs, WordPress would make a URL of blog.artesea.co.uk/2007/11/ryans-tidy-slugs.html

however if it was:
Ryan’s Tidy Slugs (notice how the apostrophe is slightly more curvy) it would be blog.artesea.co.uk/2007/11/ryan%e2%80%99s-tidy-slugs.html

Very, very ugly!

(OK, you might not be able to spot the difference as WordPress loves to curve the apostrophes, however try creating a post title using the second one).

Local Post Office to Close, again!

Lincoln, , , ,

In the last round of Post Office closures the branch on Cross Street was closed down. At the time we were told that we could easily get to our second nearest Post Office which is located on the High Street opposite St Peter at Gowts school (also the name of the branch). However according to todays plans this branch is now also to be closed.
How long before Lincoln is just left with one Post Office?

3 years old

LibDemBlogs

3rd Birthday Cake Some time before Conference, LibDemBlogs had it’s 3rd Birthday. I’m not sure exactly when it was as the archives only go as far back as 5th December 2004 and archive.org only has posts from the 4th October 2004, yet I remember having the site live before Bournemouth 2004 conference.
But looking back at those early pages it’s amazing to see that we only had 16 bloggers and were average around 6 posts a day between us. Since then only half remain active/live (Adam Nazir Ahmed Teladia, Gavin Whenman, Lynne Featherstone, Neil Fawcett, Richard Allan, Ryan Cullen, Sandra Gidley, Will Howells), whilst the others are now gone (Hazel Crabb-Wyke, Jody Dunn, Martyn Hencher, Rob Goodfellow, Sara Grey, Steve Guy, Tom Paul and Vivienne Raper).
Today we have 133 active bloggers, in the last 44 hours 92 posts have been made and the site is one of the most popular LibDem websites.

Do you expect the Police to save your life?

Media

After the recent press about the death of Jordon Lyon, I think people need to ask the following question.

Do you expect the Police to save your life?

Now it might not seem that hard, but I have the view that the Police are there to protect and the same goes for the PCSOs.
If it was two lifeguards, yes I would be asking why they didn’t jump in, but these were two fully clothed PCSOs.
It might be “human nature” to jump in, but what if the two officers couldn’t swim? I’m not the best swimmer and I remember all those years ago jumping into the swimming pool in Hemel with my pyjamas on and trying to pick up a brick, and I remember not being that good at it. Would I not be putting both the life of the boy and mine at risk if I tried a rescue? And then if I had a radio which had direct access to those that could help, would it not be better for me to use that?
What if it was a burning building instead, would you expect a PCSO to run in, or wait for the Fire Brigade?
It seems that the media like to question the roles of the PCSOs, however I know that the team we have for Park Ward in Lincoln do a great job and are welcomed by the community. So lets stop putting them down.

ps, we keep being told how the boy drown in a pond. Now I’ve seen the pictures and that is not a pond! A pond is a small water feature in your garden, this was a 6ft deep football pitch sized lake.

Blog of the Year Winner Buttons

LibDemBlogs, LibDems

No not me, I didn't win. It was James Graham As I had a slight lack of Internet access whilst in Brighton, it took some time to add the Winner Buttons to the “and the winner is“ post on LibDemVoice. However as there are some 40 posts since then I think the winning (and highly commended) authors may have missed them. So here’s a plug. Feel free to use the buttons on your own site, and the same goes for all those who made the shortlist.