LibDemBlogs Redesigned

LibDemBlogs

I’ve spent the last month working on a new version of LibDemBlogs, most likely you are now reading this on it.

The most obvious change is the new theme, which is modified version of the Rainbow theme from Theme Lab. The old theme has been around for two years now, and didn’t actually work in IE6, so it needed replacing.

The newest feature is the Mute function, this allows you to hide/silence blogs that you don’t want to read. More info about this feature can be found in the about pages.

Some of you may have already seen the new version of the mobile site which went silently live a few weeks ago. It’s moved url to m.libdemblogs.co.uk partly because mobile phone companies shouldn’t try to adjust the layout, and also because the url is easier to type. (No need to update bookmarks as you should be redirected automatically).

On top of these front end changes the whole back end has had a refit. When I first started LibDemBlogs the project was set up to allow others to use my code, since then so many changes have been made that it got in quite a mess. For example all the blogs were stored in a text file. With only 20 blogs to edit it was quick and simple, now with a list 285 bloggers it was clearly time to move to mySQL with lovely indexes.

Now whilst I’ve had the site running in beta for a few weeks, I’m certain that something will go wrong, so please do let me know.
I hope you like the new design, but if you don’t sorry, I’m not changing it again for another few years.

Somerfield, Co-op and the High Street

Lincoln

In the last month Somerfield opened a new store on the High Street in Lincoln. Today we hear that the company has been sold to the Co-operative Group.
The question I have is, “what will happen to the store on the High Street?”.
Lincolnshire is awash with Lincolnshire Co-op’s (different to the Co-operative Group, who are owned by the old Manchester Co-op), so I don’t think they will want to compete.
The BBC talk of stores being sold off, however the names being mentioned are:
– Waitrose (already one uphill)
– Morrisons (already one on Triton Road)
– Iceland (litterally opposite),
so I don’t think any of them will buy the site.
Hopefully the real media might get some answers in the next few days.

Council Tax Limitation – Lincolnshire police authority budget

Lincoln, Politics, ,

Last night when I got home, I discovered that Parliament were debating “Council Tax Limitation – Lincolnshire police authority budget”. The bill was to place a cap on the 78.9% increase that Lincolnshire police authority had made on the council tax bills. I blogged about this in March (Council Tax up by 11.1%).

So how did those Lincolnshire MPs vote?
Quentin Davies – Grantham & Stamford (Lab) – aye
John Hayes – South Holland & The Deepings (Con) – absent
Douglas Hogg – Sleaford and North Hykeham (Con) – absent
Edward Leigh – Gainsborough (Con) – absent
Gillian Merron – Lincoln (Lab) – absent
Mark Simmonds – Boston & Skegness (Con) – absent
Peter Tapsell – Louth & Horncastle (Con) – absent

Out of the 7 Lincolnshire MPs with consituents affected, only one went down the lobby.

However, at least unlike 44 LibDems, the Tories didn’t actually vote against it.

My twitter last night summed this up:
artesea disapointed to see the LibDems voting no on the Lincolnshire Police Council Tax cap on BBC Parliament.

Amazingly due to the magic of technology I got this response:
joswinson is voting against the unfair Council Tax system.

However I still can’t see how a “Local Income Tax” would have stopped the Lincolnshire Police from asking for more money than anyone would expect. Instead we now have it on record that the LibDems are “pro” 78.9% increase.

Maybe someone from the Parlimentary party would have like to have asked those who have been affected by the issue, and campaigned in elections last May what our views were first, or is that just a bit too hard?

* Voting records taken from PublicWhip.org.uk

David Davis and Nick Clegg

LibDems, Tories

I’ve been away, so sorry for this being a bit late. There seems to be a bit of an outcry on both LibDemBlogs and Facebook about the LibDems not standing in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election. However almost all of them have failed to realise that if Nick had said that we would stand against Davis during their private chat on Wednesday night, he would have shat himself and not resigned. Instead Clegg played a blinder making the Tories look weak, and Davis like a tax payers waste of money.

Ooops, blogger posts go missing on LibDemBlogs

LibDemBlogs

Sorry for all you Blogger bloggers. I upgraded my webserver to PHP5 and didn’t notice that one of the scripts used in LibDemBlogs no longer worked. What this meant was that the site thought all your posts were made on the 1st Jan 1970 and so didn’t bother to display them.
I’ve now found the offending piece of code and hopefully everything should be back to normal by now.
I did wonder why it was so quite on the site, but I just assumed that everyone was in Crewe or Henley.

Youtube and embedding correctly

Web Design

For some reason when you select the embed option in Youtube the code they provide includes <embed> tags. However these are big no-no’s in HTML. Youtube also have empty <param> tags, which should really end with />. On top of that I’ve still yet to work out why Youtube insist on having the video at 425×355 pixels, when clearly the resolution is only 320 pixels wide. Thus creating a rather blocky video as it is badly upscaled. So instead here is the “easy” way to embed Youtube videos.

Take your original code from Youtube:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVjzd320gew&hl=en"></param>
<param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVjzd320gew&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

take note of what is in bold (red) and replace with:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVjzd320gew&hl=en" width="320" height="267"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yVjzd320gew&hl=en" /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></object>

making sure that the bold bits in the original are in the new bit of code.

Hopefully no errors on a HTML validator now

Code tweaked from this post.

(Edit 05/12/09, you might also want to replace any &s with &amp)

Cadbury’s and Sony Adverts

Other

Both Cadbury and Sony use the same people to come up with their recent ads. Out of the most recent six, three are great, one is good, one is ok, and one is crap.

Balls

This was the first Sony advert, set in San Francisco with the bouncy balls falling down the hill. It falls into my great catergory, very original, music was perfect (who didn’t get the Jose Gonzalez album) and it brought back images of childhood.

Paint

The second Sony ad falls into the OK category, it felt too fake and if it wasn’t for the behind the scenes video I would have never believed that they actually used real paint. I’m guessing the big problem was using a Scottish tower block, it didn’t have that American polish that the others have.

Play-doh™

Another one of my great ads, very colourful, the soundtrack fits right in and if I had a chance I would have purchased one of the rabbits or fly out to NY.

Foam City

Set in Miami, the latest Sony Ad falls into the good category, it calm, peaceful and very impressive, just lacks the omph from the previous ad.

Gorilla

This advert for Cadbury was clever. The first time you see it with the close-ups you’re not sure what’s going on and then the pan out for the drumming scene works really well. Not 100% certain about Phil Collins, but hey it still features in my great catergory, just leaving one advert…

Trucks

… which is the worst of the lot. I just don’t like it. We have different coloured trucks racing, now if they related them to different variations of Dairy Milk (green for mint, orange for orange) then it might have worked. Also they felt the need to start the ad with the glass and a half logo, giving away what the product was before you’ve even seen the first 10 seconds.

I hope to do more advert blogging, because for some reason I like watching them, just depends whether I get around to doing it.

Fake German Number Plates

Other

Some of my regular readers might realise that I have a thing about number plates. Something that caught my eye was the top image. At the time I was looking for a 725, however foreign plates can’t be counted. However it looked very much like a British plate, just styled as a German one. So once I got home I used wikipedia to double check.
Wiki says that plates are in the format of 1-3 letters for the place, then stickers to show the emission test and vehicle safety test, then 1-2 random letters, and then 1-4 random numbers (maximum number of characters is 8). So clearly the plate on the left is actually a GB plate just designed to look like a German one (example at the bottom).
I’ve now seen two in this format, so I’m guessing someone is producing them for homesick Germans. But as with other styled number plates unless they are in the offical typeface with the correct spacing they are illegal to drive with and will fail an MOT.
Fake German Plate Real German Plate