Cameron gives Brown the two finger salute

I walked into work the other morning only to find a load of blokes in suits who sat us down and explained how we would have to work for twice the number of hours for half the pay with a grand total of one week in holidays. Per decade.

They told us it’s the same everywhere else and nobody would even think about re-employing our sorry posteriors this side of Cheetham Hill. Which sucks just a bit.

The good news is that, for the next couple of months at least, we get free drinks in the canteen and can address customers with as many expletives as we like . Plus, we get to wear slippers and dressing gowns to make us look like Hugh Hefner without consequence or recrimination. Up to a point anyway.

Don’t you just love the Conservative-Liberal coalition?

A pointless little politics-related thought/mildly amusing quip there. Anyway, I’m here to tell you that for the time being I’m gonna publish all my Retro Yakking stuff here at Illarterate instead, mainly because I plan to wind that project down for good. Don’t worry, though, because I won’t just disappear from the face of the earth like last time. Or maybe I will, who knows?

I really should get that blogroll up and running again, plus there’s a whole bunch of housekeeping with regards to archiving old projects. I shall get round to that when I have the time and resources, but for now, console yourself in the fact I’m not rotting six feet under unlike certain street sweepers. Ciao for now.

I am aware there are numerous people who have, for various reasons, become disgruntled with blogging host Today.com.

Some time ago, the company laid off a rather large section of its most popular and active writers, leading to numerous speculations over their ultimate motives. Well, I am here, at the risk of being lambasted or even losing my Today.com account, to put the record straight and say to these people — in the nicest possible way — what the heck did you expect?

Now, I am quite fortunate (?!) to have been screwed over in the past by certain web hosts by virtue of neglecting to read the small print, blundering blindly forward without a care in the world, and am not one of the said bloggers laid off by Today. At least not yet. I’d like to think, however, that my (bad) experiences have given me a little bit of insight about how the business works – you scratch my back, I scratch yours; you get nothing for nothing and any other such cliche you could care to mention.

When you sign up to Today.com, you enter into an agreement that basically means you represent Today.com by the very fact your blog is hosted under their name on their server. If you violate the Terms of Service, you can expect to be notified and perhaps even warned, just like in the real life workplace.

Read the rest of this entry »

As regular readers of the Illarterate blog (yes, I know some of you do exist, even if only in my deluded mind) might have noted before now, one particular subject I’ve been particularly outspoken about is the analogue-digital television switchover currently in operation in the United Kingdom.

For the past few years, I’ve made it pretty clear that I am not in favour of this change, though mostly this has been for comedic effect and in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Nevertheless, I am going to miss analogue with its snowy reception and (relatively) lo-def resolution.

Seems I’m not the only one, either. For the benefit of those finding it difficult to cope with all this new fangled digital television thing, I present to you a series of mildly humorous articles — written by the very same person sat typing this post right now — which you may or may not find interesting.

• How to retune your set top box: Having problems rescanning Freeview? Struggling to find the menu button because the label rubbed off in the first week? You’ll probably find this guide useful.

• More tips for retuning your set top box: Still struggling? Here are some more tips, released just in time for the November retune. Many are still applicable, so act now before the BBC blow your box up without your permission!

• The Great Digital Switchover Scam: How this whole thing is a conspiracy set up by the BBC to make us buy brand spanking new, state-of-the-art equipment we don’t necessarily need, just so they can fund more episodes of Strictly Come Prancing.

• September 30th Freeview retune – thousands lose channels: How the BBC are not only ripping us off, but also making us take time out of our day to execute a complicated series of button presses just so we can watch the News at Ten.

• Surviving the Digital Switchover: more general tips covering High Definition televisions and DVD cassette players.

• Teletext to meet early demise: Opinions on the news that Teletext will cease as of January next year. It should be noted that BBCi will still keep going, however, at least until they too deem their interactive text service no longer profitable.

As a bit of a follow up to my earlier piece on Wikia, I’ve gone to the trouble of outlining some specific things you ought to know when creating a Wikia wiki. Don’t see these articles as a personal attack on Wikia, who, on the whole provide a very good service. Consider them a rant against the general over-reliance on advertising at free content websites, something that’s becoming increasingly prevalent in this current economic climate, and something that cheeses me off slightly.

Look out for more posts on this subject in the future and perhaps some sort of archive bringing all my Wikia pieces together.