waider

So Values of N is shutting down (which, I suspect, means that that's a volatile link). I had played around with Stikkit and thought it was interesting; I was more interested in I Want Sandy (a digital personal assistant, lest the name makes you think it's some sort of questionable content!) but was frankly disappointed with the fact that the Stikkit API never made it to I Want Sandy despite the fact that they were both based on the same technology and there was a long-running user request thread to implement such a feature. Ignoring all arguments for and against the viability of giving away your core product for free, I think one of the key things in making a product successful is allowing other people to add value - whether that's through an API, or through a SDK, or some sort of developer program is not relevant; the fact of the matter is that one company can't come up with all the possible ways in which their product will be used, and even if they could, they have limited resources and have to concentrate on the applications of that product that are expected to provide the greatest return on investment. Anyway, if you had accounts on either of these sites, now would be a good time to go and fetch your data and/or nuke your account. I'd been meaning to shut mine down anyway as the lack of API had pretty much turned me off most of the possible interactions I'd otherwise have had with the site, so for the last year or more it's been emailing me the same to-do list and I've just been deleting it and ignoring it.

update: I've just finished reading the followup comments on the linked post. They're laughable, to say the least. People apparently feel that because they put their data into a free service, that free service is obliged to stay running ad infinitum. And various people are standing on soapboxes declaring the death of Web 2.0/Cloud Computing/Buzzword Buzzword Buzzword. Dollars to dimes these people have free accounts on last.fm, twitter, myspace, livejournal, facebook, flickr, etc. and while soapboxing against Values Of N will not even consider these other places storing their precious bodily fluids data. It's very simple: whatever else you do with your data, keep a local copy. If you're blindly putting data you value into the hands of others with no scope for force majeure recovery, you really don't value that data very much.

Jurys Inn, Limerick, guarantees me that their website's price is the lowest.

We guarantee that for any hotel reservation made on jurysinns.com, you will not find a lower room rate publicly available on the Internet for that same room type in the same Jurys Inn on the same date requested!
If, having made a booking on a Jurys Inns branded website, you should find a lower publicay available price, for the same room at the same hotel, elsewhere on the internet within 24 hours of booking, we will honour that rate. (link)

The terms and conditions are interesting, but I am amused by this gem:

The availability of the competing rate must be proved by an acceptable form of evidence.  An "acceptable" form of evidence will be the forwarding to us of an official print screen or email confirming a reservation... (my emphasis)

What's an official print screen? That aside, if I'm reading this right, it seems I need to book through the Jurys Inns website, then book through the competing website as well.

Oh yeah. It also tells me how to "challange" the Jurys Inns Price Guarantees. I found a better way to "challange" it: look up cheaper hotels on Booking.com. Booyah.

In the past week or so, it has been independantly noted that I am very bitter and I am cynical beyond repair. Sorry if you were on the receiving end of that. Also, sorry if you encountered Cranky Waider this week, as he was in pretty full effect due to some technical stuff that was going the wrong way down a one-way street, and doing so while honking its horn at people coming the other way trying to point out the error.

Having gotten that out of the way, I will note the following (we'll call it "residual crankiness")

• My Amazon Wishlist is now titled "Yes, it's up-to-date". Even though there is stuff on it from 2004 that's no longer available from Amazon themselves, and there's other stuff there that Amazon UK simply won't ship to me due to an ongoing issue with recycling laws in Ireland.
• Twitter comes with a feed. So does your blog. If I'm interested in the latter, you really shouldn't need to tell me about it on the former. Announce your blog, sure. Tell me every time you post? Not so much.
• Daylight savings time can bite me. Twice. And the alleged US energy-saving legislation from 2005 that made things even more screwy can seriously bite me.
• Livejournal posts of your twitter posts: same deal as going the other way. If I'm interested, I'll have subscribed to both. If I'm not interested, I'm not frickin' interested, ok?
• This weather has got to stop. I got snowed on last weekend. I came home yesterday with hands so cold I could barely type. And now it's blazing sunshine, after blowing a storm this morning. Maybe humans were meant to sleep through this.
• Dear local bar, please clean the taps or something. Three beers giving me a headache? That's not right.

In the immortal words of the TBSC:

Whew, that was fun. Actually, it has nothing to do with any of that. I'm just killing time until this Pat tape runs out.

Included in my latest credit card bill: a flyer for MBNA 3D Secure - "it's like chip and PIN - only for the Internet!"

What, it's a meaningless addition to the verification process, the main aim of which is to make the card operator even less liable for fraud and instead make it the cardholder's fault?

An email as it was displayed to me just now:

This is a text part of the message.

It is shown for the users of old-style e-mail clients

Old-style. Back in the days before email-borne virii, full-colour pornographic junk, and OCR-defeating stock-dump scams. Bring back the good old days, I say!

Saw a promo for this on one of the big screens at the gym tonight: "America's Most Smartest Model". Actually, from that link I get the impression that the grammatical error is intentional (the "Most" is made to look like it's a pencilled-in correction, which isn't how it was shown on the promo I saw), but it's like the kid says on the Simpsons: "are you being sarcastic, dude?" "I don't even know anymore."

From the previously-cited Drummond piece, I find an example of something I've found both increasingly prevalent and increasingly annoying: the Spurious Comma.

I do not want to spend every November, for the rest of my life, trying to breathe new life into a concept, that should have been left alone years ago.

Please tell me why there is a comma after "concept" in the above sentence. Arguably the rest of 'em should go, too, but that one is the biggest offender. This, as I say, appears to be gaining in popularity: the placement of a comma where not only is there no need for one, but the insertion of which messes up the flow of the sentence. Where do people learn this stuff? Is it the same school where they teach misuse of apostrophes?

A certain well-known author top-replies. For shame.

An offer page on Vodafone's website currently reads, "Register you phone online and receive FREE call credit" (my emphasis)

Letter from my electricity supplier, paraphrased: we've not been able to gain access to your premises to read your meter for quite some time. Please call this number and follow the prompts to enter a reading.

So I called the number.

"Thank you", it said, "for calling the ESB networks emergency line. For various emergency options, press various numbers, otherwise press '9'"

So I pressed '9'.

"For a new or increased line (?), relocation of a meter, or some other thing that isn't a meter reading, press 1, otherwise press 2"

So I pressed '2'.

"You need to talk to someone else. Go away.".

Er. Ok. Fortunately, they have a website where I can enter the reading - which also advises me that I can call the same phone number and enter my details.