2007 May -- The Jumps : Home of Kevin and Ruth Jump

OK it’s got a banner now

posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 by Kevin in [Insight, Nerdy]

I don’t know, you make one little change..

The fact is I didn’t like the old design. I don’t know why, it just grated on me, and I needed to change it - it was like a mental block stopping me from doing anything else with the site, but everyone was right. The images are a bit of a USP (unique selling point) of the site. It’s really just another faddy icony fonty website with out the picture across the top. So I’ve put one back. Somewhere in a dark corner of my hard drive is the code to change it depending on what you are reading - maybe I will put that on one day too (see writing code in my spare time - this management lark has gotten to me).

Ruth also doesn’t like that it’s now really just a blog as opposed to a site - I see her point, but the blog is really all we update. Yes, there’s the family tree, and again the library of our books once existed, but when it was a site (with a blog hidden away) almost everyone went for the blog - so I thought, give people what they want.

I think this is an improvement on the last site. There is more space for words, and our piccies are down the side. It doesn’t look very nice in IE6 - but I’m not in work now so I don’t care (it’s like a rebellious streak many web developers have, make them conform all day and they refuse, given their own space).

For those people who are thinking this doesn’t look like other people say it looks - Shift before you press the refresh button (another windows only tip there ) and it should look like the picture on the left.

More on baby kit

posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 by Ruth in [Henry]

In case you were wondering, the Great Pram Debate has resulted in no actual purchases - if I even sneakily suspect that the baby-wearing thing is going to be the way forward, then any significant capital outlay elsewhere doesn’t make a lot of sense. I have a pram that’s good enough, and I can change my mind later if I want to, can’t I?

How much better is this job?

posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 by Kevin in [Council, JMU]

I’ve just changed the design of the page, nothing to do with my job. Just while I was testing I searched for ‘bike‘ (I rode in again today first time since January). and found a post where i was complaining about meetings driving me mad - but that was my old job. today?

I had five meetings and it was cool. yes the meeting with finance was a bit draining but I enjoyed the day. Five meetings in a day at JMU would have seen me standing on the window ledge.

He’s changed it again

posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 by Ruth in [Insight, Nerdy]

I hate change.

The sooner the better?

posted on Monday, May 21, 2007 by Ruth in [Consuming, Henry]

I’m almost (but not quite) at the point of thinking that the sooner this baby arrives, the better off we’ll all be. Obviously, if it came tomorrow, it would be prem by about five and a bit weeks, and I don’t want that if it’s avoidable. But three weeks from now would be perfect.

For one thing, my homebirth is looking rather more likely to come off if it’s early. I saw the obstetric consultant the other week, and whilst he finally resolved the issue of my due date to my satisfaction, he simultaneously threw a different spanner in the works when he said that Daisy’s shoulder got stuck, and that made me a high(er) risk for the next delivery.

My first reaction was confusion, closely followed by anger. It was the first I’d heard of it, but there it was, in my hospital notes, exactly as if it was true. Later, I asked Kevin if he had any recollection of such a thing, and he said no. So, if it happened, no one was talking about it at the time, and perhaps more reprehensibly, no one told us afterwards. I’ve spent seven months answering questions from health professionals about my first birth, believing I knew what happened, and with them, apparently, believing I did, too. There is a clear assumption that I would know, but this particular detail took two and half years to come to my attention. I felt exactly as if they’d made it up, and sprung it on me out of spite, which is, of course, ludicrous.

Anyway, the good Professor pulled a face when I said “home birth” and insisted that I talk to the community midwives ASAP about whether they’re still prepared to support it. He also arranged for me to go back nearer the time, for an assessment of whether this baby is looking particularly big. He initially suggested at 38-39 weeks, but then gave me an appointment on my due date - I strongly suspect, because he doesn’t do clinic himself every week, and wanted to be there. When I said, “hang on, what price my home birth in the fortnight before that?” he said that if the baby was early, it was unlikely to be a problem anyway - that Daisy was both big and late, and it was the combination of those factors that was most likely to have caused the problem.

My own feeling is that the ten hours flat on my back in bed, the syntocinon drip and the epidural were more likely to be the significant factors. I have, of course, done some research since then, and discovered that “difficulty delivering shoulders” is a long way short of real shoulder distocia in the vast bulk of cases, and that those three factors are all implicated in the statistical risk. Since one cannot get an epidural or a syntocinon drip at home, it seems to me that the home birth would have already gone wrong before most of the particular risks of Daisy’s case came into play, but what do I know?

Last week I saw the midwife, who needs to check with the team leader, but is of the belief that we can continue as planned until my due-date hospital appointment, and then see how things stand. She also added that she has more respect for my consultant than for most of them, and is inclined to take his concerns seriously, which is worth knowing, I suppose.

So, having delivered Daisy at 42 +2 weeks, I’m hoping against hope for this baby to come at 38 or so, so’s to be late enough for a home delivery, but as small as possible at the time. Early indications suggest that it is a little on the large side, but then, so am I. And it’s still a bit soon to tell.

The other reason why the sooner would be to the better, is that I keep finding wonderful baby-kit that I can’t afford, that would be so much better than what we had last time, and the sooner I’m too busy looking after a new baby to look, the lesser the temptation.

Discovery of the day is this:

http://www.naturesnest.co.uk

Which looks lovely, and cozy, and the perfect place for a little tiny thing to sleep. Plus it’s dead portable, so if you go away, s/he has the familiarity of the same bed wherever you go. And only three times the price of the perfectly serviceable crib we already have.

The thing is, I keep finding stuff like this. I can’t help it. And the only thing I can think of to call a halt to it, is actually giving birth.

So, not quite the sooner the better, but very nearly so…

please place brain in the bagging area

posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 by Kevin in [Consuming, Nerdy, Ranty]

Our little Tesco has recently replaced one till with two self service tills. The idea I think is that they save money on staff, and the queues move a little quicker because of more tills. Of-course it doesn’t work like that, most people won’t use the new tills, either through fear of technology or because the’ve watched how people struggle so much with them.

There are a number of problems, and while this post is really about newspapers, I’ll tell you them anyway.

The ‘bagging’ area:
This is the bit to the side of the till where you put your stuff in a bag (good name then). In-order for the till to guide you the bagging area is pressure sensitive, so you scan the item put it in a bag and the till knows your ready for your next item.

Tesco Self-Service The problem is what happens when you are buying one or two things ? most people don’t put them in bags so the till just keeps saying “place item in bagging area”, while the bemused customer looks at the bar of chocolate and the screen thinking “what I’m not putting this in a bag”.

The other problem is children, I’ve seen a number of people go to the till with there child who is desperate to see the screen so leans on the pressure pad and the till says ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ which to be fair the developer probably didn’t expect you to put your child in a till.

(very quickly this could turn into a ran about software development so I will try to hold back)

This is all indicative of over exposure to something during development, when your writing software or making something it’s very easy to become over familiar with how it works, sure during all the design and testing it made perfect sense, put your shopping on the right, scan and put in a bag on the left. I wonder if they actually got a mother with two children, no time and a pint of milk to test the system?

Restricted Items :

This is the problem i got today which even now seems very strange - Ruth had a little lie into day, so Daisy and me went to little tesco to buy a newspaper and some flowers (I had a softy moment). When we got to the till there was no one on around, the old man next to me (rather sensibly as it turned out) decided to camp out and wait for an assistant to come. Me being the tech savvy, software professional that i am, strolled over to the self service tills, ‘I’ll show that old man’ i thought, ‘just wonder over, quickly scan two items and stroll out before he’s even seen someone come to serve him. Except I hadn’t factored in both the ‘bagging area’ and the contraband i was carrying.

After finding the bar-code on the flowers, and eventually getting the bagging area to recognise they where there, I hunted for the bar-code on my paper - just as i was being to suspect that the old man new something i dind’t about papers and bar-codes I located it (in the banner at the top which was a bit odd). scanned it, and got ‘this is a restricted item, assistance required’ - ‘very odd i thought’ I looked around and staff where starting to appear, maybe it was the orange flashing light which tells everybody else in the store -this man can’t work the till - look he looks clever but he’s broken it.

Eventually the screen just flicked back to normal with two big buttons ‘next item’ and ‘finish’ - so i clicked finish, and again ‘assitance required - restricted item’ - by this time a woman came over and looked at the till (she did actually work in the Tesco, so i wasn’t to bothered). typed in around 3 codes : The first of which was plain text - so is probably her ID the second of which wasn’t shown on the screen but given the size of the screen and the number pad it displayed was so obviously 1000, that i forgot the first number. and the till told her that I had to be 12 to buy the guardian!

It then took her three attempts at the till and two at the ‘authorizer’ station before i was allowed out of the shop with the paper. It mustn’t have been easy to sort it out, not with me behind making snide comments to daisy about how old I was and if she thought i was over twelve and allowed to read the paper.

Since I got home I’ve quickly looked through the paper and i can’t see why I have to be twelve, I don’t mind when they stop people buying stuff for legal reasons (like cigarettes or 12 rated films), but when Tesco appear to make value judgements about how anyone under 12 just won’t gain anything from the news, it goes a bit to far.

As a service to people who stumble…

posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 by Kevin in [Insight, Nerdy]

onto our web site from the most bizarre of places:

A New slate roof on a terrace house in Liverpool costs : ?4079 and we had a nice roofer.
No you shouldn’t go into work tonight
how do i block up a fireplace ? - definitely not like me, it was a complete mess
we’ve got a “pram with a flip over handle” and it’s a nightmare to steer.
and “should i pay my fine for forgetting to declare SORN?” yes don’t be silly, we paid the fine because the DVLA can’t type properly.
and yes you are not the only person to sing “lock the task-bar” to the tune of rock the casbah