Monthly Archives: November 2003

Hands off, Leeds!

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Oh no. Just when things have got onto a fairly even keel at Southampton, rather than the annual relegation dogfight, along come—let’s face it, struggling—Leeds, wanting to poach our manager! I know Strachan used to play for Leeds, but he’s managed Saints so well since his arrival that it would be madness for him to leave for the Premiership’s bottom club. Wouldn’t it?


Maybe he feels he’s done all he can, and that he needs a new challenge. There has been no approach from Leeds, according to the Saints FC web site, but BBC Sport reckon that Leeds would have to compensate Saints to the tune of £500,000, and that Saints are lining up former Dell favourite Mark Hughes as his replacement!


It’s all a bit reminiscent of the Wayne Bridge episode, when the club said “Wayne’s not going”, and then he went. If Mark Hughes did replace Strachan, I’m sure that would be a good thing. Strachan has done brilliantly, but is limited somewhat by the size and quality of the squad. My only fear would be if WGS leaves and is replaced by someone clearly not cut out for the job, like Stuart Gray in the wake of Dave Jones Glenn Hoddle’s departure.


As usual, time will tell. But I’ll be blowed if Leeds’ current woes end up costing us our manager…

Lift Text Transcoder

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I was recently faced with the prospect of LIFT Text Transcoder being considered for use where I work. Having seen what this new accessibility software from UsableNet can do does, and the cost, I had my reservations. Not being sure, I got in touch with Jeffrey Zeldman, who wrote about it on Tuesday, 18th November.

Jeffrey copied Joe Clark in on his reply, which is a good move, as Joe is an access expert and author of Building Accessible Websites. Their opinion, with which I agree, was that it is an unwise and unnecessary tool to deploy.

So, I think Lift Text Transcoder is A Bad Thing for the following reasons:

  1. Text-only web sites do not provide equivalent access for disabled people.
  2. It assumes that partially-sighted people have no use for design.
  3. It removes one of the major incentives for refactoring Web sites to use Standards-Compliant markup and CSS.
  4. It is unnecessary – access improvements happen under the hood (in the markup), and it is possible to layer presentation on top.
  5. It encourages a form of segregation – disabled people are shunted off to a separate corner of the web site. “Use the back door, please”

So, for the second time, I effected change. For it was I who alerted Jeffrey to the existence of LIFT Text Transcoder. And I’m glad I did—someone has to stand up and point out when something is stupid. I’ll leave you with a quote from Joe:

This text-only utility is widely seen as the stupidest thing to come along all year. And people are falling for it!
Your site can itself be made accessible. You don’t need a Ladies’ Auxiliary to which you shunt disabled visitors.

My First Album

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Scot Hacker posed the question: “What was your first album?”


As Scot’s comment system seems to be fubar, I thought I’d post here instead.


Paul Simon: Graceland album cover

Due to older-sibling-influence, the first album I bought (on cassette) was Graceland by Paul Simon. Quite a mature choice for a ten-year-old, followed, due to other-older-sibling-influence, by So by Peter Gabriel a few months later. Quite a mature choice for an eleven-year-old…


Debbie Gibson: Electric Youth album cover

It all went downhill later, when I joined Britannia Music Club, and I purchased Electric Youth by Debbie Gibson. We all make mistakes ;)

Big Day

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Yesterday was a Big Day for Ella and Nina—they got to go outside without a leash for the first time, aided and abetted by the cat-flap (useless fact: it’s Katzenklappe in German) fitted by Kathy’s Dad, Clive (muchas gracias, Clive!).

What I want to do next is butter their paws, to test the theory that this will encourage them to always come home. This is alleged to be an Old Wives’ Tale, but a colleague of mine, who used to be a chemist, tells me that there is sound scientific basis for this practice. Apparently cats will lick the butter from their paws and associate the good feelings that they get with the location of those feelings, and therefore will always come back in order to feel good again.

Here, kitty kitty—come and get your butter fix…