eddie-brown.net blog

Last wednesday evening, i went to the awards dinner for the 100 Best Small Companies to work for, as one of two people representing Cougar Automation. We came 22nd, which was nice.

It was a fun evening, and also very informative – seeing what other companies do.

The principle is that we need to be a great place to work, so that we attract and retain great people, who then do great work for the client. Or something along those lines.

What was interesting was the number of charities, and not just as extra seats at the dinner cost around £250 each! I figure that is a sector where employees really have to be committed to their employer and believe in what they are doing. Othe strongly represented sectors were recruitment companies, training/consultancy companies and communication/media/publicity companies

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I have started using Twitter Digest to post a daily update of all my tweets. Unfortunately it had got itself into a bit of a loop, and was posting tweets that were anouncing new blog posts. Ooooh, lots of track back pings!

Twitter Digest allows you to ignore @replies. So i found where it was doing that

// Are we dropping replies?
if (get_option('ws_td_drop_replies') && preg_match('/^@.*/', $tw_data->text)) {
continue;
}

and used that as the basis for ignoring tweets anouncing new blog posts, by adding in the entry

// Eddie Brown Mod - drop posts that have been anounced on twitter.
if (preg_match('/^New blog post:.*/', $tw_data->text)) {
continue;
}
I checked the regular expression using Regex Plant: Online regular expression tester

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Looks like the automatic upgrade worked.

Maybe my twitter digests start working again now. 2.9.1 is supposed to fi a problem with scheduled posts.

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I have mostly been posting short comments via Twitter. I thought these would then pull through to my Blog…. but apparently not.

And I was trying to ensure there was some more content on this blog.

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Looking at the BBC Weather site, and outside the window it appears I live in Barnsley (snow forecast) rather than Pontefract (not much snow forecast at all) and to think i cleared the road of snow today, in the hope the sun might then get rid of the ice…

I could think that the following video depicts Madeline later

Except there is no way she would be that active!

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Warning. Naughty words…

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Some people may find the attached list of hotels in or around the town of Stamford in Lincolnshire to be of use.

Hotels in Stamfod {description-autop,

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Size:45 KB - Downloaded 167 times

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For some reason, I had a letter from the Student Loan Company telling me they had made it easier to repay my loan. Then a further letter a few days letter with the other half of my login details and a leaflet on security online.

For a laugh, I entered the details i was given on their site, and after accepting some terms and conditions i was granted entry, only to discover

The service you wish to access is unavailable. Please try again at a later date.

Now, currently i am not sure why I would want to pay back my loan. I cannot easily make more than 2% in a savings account, but i am sure i would be better off paying more towards my mortgage in the long term than cutting my remaining student debt.
Speaking of which, it will still be the second half of 2015 before i finish paying off my student loan currently.

I wonder if the government is just trying to get any cash in that it can…..

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I was looking for the news quiz yesterday on listen again, and I spotted a link to the best start up music in the world…. ever!

I am almost tempted to make my latop play it every time it starts up, then again, maybe i shouldn’t!

Yes, a page of information about the UK Theme also exists.

Now, If i had that for the start, then we would have to play Sailing By^[1] as windows shuts down…

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1. Heh. That answer forgets to mention that if they notice sailing by shrinking, then they start writing letters… [↩]

Blogging via twitter works! Maybe?

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