Why didn’t I think of it before? The Joke Database has been here for a while, in fact it predates this blog by a few years. But now I have a page which you can just keep refreshing to read random jokes which will be selected until you’ve read them all – though duplicates are not filtered out.

The first proper post on this blog, discounting some emails about the Tour de France fantasy game which I converted to blog format, was Reading For Free back in late July 2005. I started the blog on WordPress and am still running it (back then it was version 1.2 and then 1.5). I created my own theme in September with help from Urban Giraffe and have modified it a bit since then, adding widget support (very late on that one, but didn’t need it before), tweets in the sidebar, and most recently a mobile version.

I have just upgraded to the latest version (3.1). The dashboard and back office looks cleaner, and has come a long way from the way it used to look. Sadly my post frequency average is only about 2 posts a month, which means my audience is still very limited. If you can’t post at least once a day, you’ll never build up readership – though once you have your readers, you might be able to diversify and post regularly but not necessarily to the same blog. I’ve spent five years hoping I could find more time to say more, still hoping.

With more and more people browsing on iPhones, BlackBerrys and so on, I thought it would be useful to work out how WordPress can render blog posts for mobile screens. I’ve been annoyed on my recent Samsung Corby Pro phone at just how hard it is to read the web properly. A lot of fixed width columns here and there mean that you cannot find a satisfactory level of zoom to read them.

I have just activated a plugin pack – the WordPress Mobile Pack – to test browsing this blog on mobile phones. Basically the site now detects whether you’re on a mobile device or not, and if you are then an alternative theme is served. The mobile version is optimised for small screens and – from my tests – is much easier to read at a reasonable text size. You can comment from mobiles too, and it seems even the WordPress admin screens might work. I will need to customise the theme a bit more to match better with the desktop blog theme which I developed myself. [EDIT: this is now done]

Let me know if you’re reading on a mobile device, would love to have your feedback.

The world of web fonts has traditionally been limited to Times, Arial and Courier (and various variants thereof like Helvetica which of course came first). Other fonts can be used reasonably safely if you’re careful, or not too picky about certain target platforms displaying exactly the same font.

CSS has a rule (@font-face) which allows you to specify whatever typeface you want by making it download automatically to your users. Support isn’t universal, but improving with some clever CSS font hacks and so on.

I’ve always been keen to find nice readable fonts on the web, and I love projects like Readability too, which cleans up web pages of their clutter and puts the words you want to read (and not the flashing adverts, links, navigation, etc) into a much easier-on-the-eye and relaxing format.

Somebody recently tweeted a link to a free web font showcase which had chosen fonts specifically for on-screen reading. That led me over to Font Squirrel, where I picked up Charis SIL Regular and set it to be the font for the body of my articles on this blog. Previously I used Palatino (you may see Book Antiqua, Georgia or your standard serif font thanks to CSS font precedence rules), which is still visible in the sidebar – see the difference? Have an opinion? Let me know.

I took a picture of a bookshop that I pass on my route to the offices my company has recently moved to in La Défense. I liked the fact that it was a weathered, old shop sign. No doubt it hasn’t been open for years, though it may be caught in a time warp and still in business. What really piqued me was that the name. Horribly wrong punctuation. No use of apostrophe to indicate possession unless they only sold books about characters called Betty. The whole thing, in two words and one misplaced apostrophe, was a mess.

Having posted the photo to Flickr, a talented musician and songwriter friend of mine (Paul) immediately picked up on the “Betty” reference, it having been part of the title of possible one of the simplest but most effective tracks we ever played together, Sweaty Betty.

A couple of days later, I found an old USB stick which had a random selection of 300 tracks from my mp3 collection. I plugged it into my car stereo and was listening to some old tunes when I heard the familiar riff from the start of Sweaty Betty, and it started right around the point where Betty Book’s (sic) is. Thus the triple reference to Betty – the shop, the comment and the tune – in one short week reminded me that I had always intended to post about it.

Paul recollects this on the songwriting:

The song is basically about a smelly girlfriend. Wrote it in about 30 seconds. The true story is that one day I was walking past Betty’s Bistro [in Leamington Spa, where we lived as students] and saw (what looked like) the owner sweeping up outside. She was absolutely massive and had sweaty armpits so we nicknamed it Sweaty Betty’s.

The song lyrics were finalised just a couple of days before our booked studio time to record a few tracks as a demo EP – mostly as a souvenir of the band, which was forced apart as the three members all changed jobs in the space of a few months and could no longer meet to rehearse easily. The verses are structured around a A – G – Em7 progression, and the chorus is A – Gsus4 which gives it a little edge. The bass line was improvised and built around the guitar riff and progressions, and a breakdown in the song towards the end let me come up with a bass line which drives the song to the finale.

I could even take credit for some of the lyrics. The skeleton structure was improvised and extended during jamming sessions with The Rosco. Paul gave “I don’t really know you, all I know is that I itch like crazy” to which I added “I don’t really know you, all I know is that your dog’s got rabies!”.

Here’s the song, with player courtesy of the WPaudio plugin. Sweaty Betty – The Rosco.

Betty Book’s
Originally uploaded by simon_music.
Sweaty Betty by Evans/White, © 2005 All Rights Reserved

As a Brit, I always had something of a thing about the American traffic signs we’d see on TV series imported massively to our screens. In England (and elsewhere in Europe) there is a green man and a red man, the green man active and the red man standing still. It’s perhaps more universal and requires zero literacy. In the US the signs say “WALK” in green, and “DON’T WALK” in red. Yet in fact, you wish to cross the road. You could walk elsewhere without violating the sign – making me feel as if everyone should just stop walking near these signs and pay their reverence.

When I was in New York, around 2002 on my way to Haiti, I snapped the first sign I saw. Here it is.

Footnote: the observant among you (all three of you) will note I have taken Tweet resumés from the home page, so that it looks a bit more like an interesting place to read articles. Tweets are still available in the sidebar and the tweet week résumés can be read by RSS or by clicking the “twitter” category.

Don’t Walk
Originally uploaded by simon_music

I spent part of the day looking through some old photographs, taken before I had a digital camera. I picked a few out to scan, and of the first batch that I have uploaded here’s one which I think is nice, even if it is slightly out of focus. Perhaps it’s even part of the charm, the soft focus. Taken around 2001 in Sidi Kaouki near Essaouira in Morocco, Halima was sitting outside of a small café having a coffee & cigarette.

Since I got a digital point and shoot camera, I haven’t shot any photos on analogue film. I think that’s a bit of a shame, because my old SLR had better optics and you could do much more with depth of field and soft focus. Perhaps I ought to go back to analogue – though you can only get film developed by sending it off (like when I was a kid with my little 110 format point and shoot). Pipe dreams and nostalgia. A digital SLR might be a reasonable compromise, but they’re still upwards of the 500€ mark.

Relaxing with a Cigarette
Originally uploaded by simon_music

We brought Maya home from the local SPA (French equivalent of the RSPCA, Société Protectrice des Animaux) after a long time trying to decide which cat to adopt. The only criteria we had were for a sterilised female, because our other cat is male – wanted to keep a good yin/yang balance.

While we were there, we were disgusted to see a couple leave when they were told there was a contribution to be made on adoption. They thought animals would just be free, failing to make the link that contributing to the upkeep of the animal shelter is important, as is the financial token that the adopters will be responsible with the animal they adopt.

So far she has adapted well to her new life, and is getting on well with everyone.

Maya, Rescued Cat
Originally uploaded by simon_music