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Calling Mr Pretentious

What the hell is it with mobile phone adverts over the last year or so?

It’s like all the major service providers are trying to outdo each other on the pretentious-o-meter.

I find myself willing the smug twat falling at the start of the T-Mobile Flext advert to run out of credit on the way down. Or if that’s too graphic, at least just before he puts his hand through the plate glass window to prod his hipster friend on the arm.

Whatever happened to using the stairs? or giving a gentle tap on the window?

No, of course you don’t use them any more, because you’re tied into some wanky 18 month contract that lets you perma-glue your phone to your ear during every waking moment of your unquestionably trendy life. Normal shit is below you now – it would only undermine the obviously prescient lifestyle choices you’ve made on the way to arriving at Level 7 Hipster status.

Of course, the pretentious-o-meter is going to need recalibrating for when the bloody iPhone launches over here, isn’t it? Pretentious product coupled with an industry with a penchant for pretense. It’ll be pretentiageddon, mark my words.

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Journal

Unpleasant Diversions

Back on Friday the 19th I’d learned from the radio on the way home from work that there were major tailbacks joining the M6 from the M62 due to a festival taking place over that weekend. With the drive up to Scotland ahead of me that night I decided to take it easy when I got home – have some food, put a wash on, tidy up a bit and “clear my desk” on the internet before heading off.

Unfortunately I got completely sidetracked and ended up rushing to fill the car as 9pm loomed, before finally rolling out of the driveway at just after the hour. I wasn’t too bothered – I figured the traffic would have died down on the M6 and that the road up to Scotland would be fairly empty. A half an hour later and I found I was right on the money – there were no queues, the M6 was relatively clear, and the evening was dry, so I got my motorway driving head on and settled in for the three hours that lay ahead.

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Code Comments

Back in the Web

Up until recently, for a very long time, I’d kind of lost my mojo with web development.

Five years ago I was regularly reading the blogs of all the industry names, and hankering after the new evolution of each browser for the baby-step closer to consistent standards support it might bring. Out of my own pocket I’d buy books on PHP or CSS, as well as subscribing to publications like PHP Architect to keep me abreast of open source projects and new techniques.

Then, a couple of years back (I’m not quite sure when) I just simply lost my enthusiasm for it, gave up reading the blogs, cancelled my PHP Architect subscription, and stopped giving a toss whether I was using the latest trendy CSS hack to achieve some ridiculous positional trick dreamed up by a pillar of the web development community. Whatever passion I initially had for web development was gone.

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