Month: November 2006

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Blaine in giant gyroscope stunt

Illusionist David Blaine has begun his next stunt, spinning inside a gyroscope above the streets of New York.

Okay, that’s annoying enough, but how about this:

After the stunt, Blaine will lead 100 underprivileged children chosen by The Salvation Army charity on a shopping spree.

There’s something wrong with the man.

Blaine in giant gyroscope stunt

PHP developer job

My web development company, Exponetic is looking for another PHP developer. More details of the job here but the main skills I’m after are:

  • OO PHP4 + 5, MySQL 3 + 4 (2+ years commercial experience)
  • MySQL (2+ yrs) and exposure to any other relational databases would be beneficial
  • Relevant Linux exposure, especially with Apache
  • Knowledge of XHTML, CSS2 (although you will not be expected to be writing
    templates)
  • Demonstrable problem-solving ability

We’ve got some good clients lined up and are producing some interesting applications at the moment, not just run of the mill CMS or OSCommerce roll-outs. Just the kind of thing to keep an active developer’s mind healthy!

PHP developer position at Exponetic, London

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

This useful app allows you to run different versions of Internet Explorer on the same Windows install, which sounds pretty clever and indeed it is. A simple download and install and it seems to do exactly what it promises. Now why can’t Microsoft provide that kind of functionality, I wonder?

I also tried the IE7 standalone install but I can’t tell how successful that’s been yet. IE7 started up just fine, but the first dropdown I tried to interact with throw a ‘popup blocked’ error. Could be a glitch but I can live with it for now.

Install multiple versions of IE on your PC

Standalone IE7

The Pride of Spitalfields pub

The Pride of Spitalfields is definitely one of the best east end pubs I’ve found so far. Good beer, a good location, and near my office. The barman also remembered my order even though I’d even been to the bar once and you can’t really ask for more than that.

The Pride of Spitalfields on Beer in the Evening

The Pride of Spitalfields on ViewLondon

Spurs 3-1 Port Vale

Spurs 3-1 Port Vale

After nearly 25 years I had my chance to see Spurs, and my first visit to White Hart Lane. The last time I saw what’s supposed to be my first team was when the League Cup was called the Milk Cup (because it was sponsored by milk, I presume, rather than because of it’s low cocoa solid content) when they played Gillingham back in the early 80’s (I think).

They certainly made hard work of this League One side, who I’ll also be seeing again in a few weeks time when they play Orient in the league. Although Spurs dominated play, as you would expect, the weakened side just couldn’t break through and, as can always happen, the lower league side got the first goal after some scrappy defending.

With fifteen minutes to go Martin Jol put on a couple of players that he really should have had on earlier if this was supposed to be taken seriously, including Aaron Lennon and Dimitar Berbatov. Lennon was impressive with his pace, Berbatov slightly less so although he did demonstrate some good touches.

The electrifying performance was from Jermaine Defoe and I still can’t believe how much he can twist and turn around defenders. Still, even with six or seven shots on goal, Spurs were still 1-0 down until a lucky header went in off the post. It was bad luck for the Port Vale goalkeeper who had an excellent game and must now be in the sights of some bigger clubs.

We were forced to sit through extra time as the drizzle started to drift under the roof cover but two more goals made the victory look more comfortable than it really was.

Spurs 3-1 Port Vale on the BBC site