It’s been a while since I actually finished a book. I think it depends a lot on my reading habbit; and just how much time I give myself to catch the train in the morning.

Stuart Marconi’s Pies and Prejudice is a book about the north, as in the north of the country - north of Crewe as it turns out. It’s meant to be a look the north has character too, and isn’t just flat caps and the Hovis music; I’m not convinced it achieves it aim.

Really this book is a Stuart Marconi nostalgia trip: He moved dow south for the glittering radio one thing. Now don’t get me wrong people are entitled to be proud of there roots, and he does a very good job of getting all the bits of the north and explaining the subtle differences that make us all unique - I’m from Liverpool which Marconi rightly puts as not really a northern town, more of an enclave of its own.

It’s just later in the book, he gets all sentimental and starts rambling about random music facts and bits of history that really don’t bring much to it. It has the sense of a book that the author could have finished after about 150 pages; but you can’t sell books that short so his editor made him add bits onto the end.

There is a whole bit at the bigging which tries (and I suspect fails) to persuade southerners that this book isn’t just a northern thing; again I think the publishers made him do it. The reality is why would you want to read this if you are from the south, it’s like me wanting to read about the history of Sussex - first I’d have to find it on a map.

I have been Sans Camera for about 3 weeks, since if flew out the back of a car while we we’re visiting friends during Easter. I’ve been ever so good, waiting and waiting until I got the financial clearance (the credit card month moved over one).

So on Saturday I ordered it, and today my shiny new camera arrived. and digital camera number three is a FujiFilm S5800. gone are the shiny silver things that fit in your pocket, and in comes the house brick that takes real good photies.

Daisy already has the grasp of how to be photographed so there is no change for this camera.

Hidden

for those that might care, It’s a Fuji S5800, 8 megapixel, 10x optical zoom, thingy with pop up flashy bit, and movie thing. It cost £99!

I don’t know why companies give you all the delivery options in the world (well i do, money), because I forwent all that next day, 3 day stuff, and plumped for free delivery It still came Tuesday, when ordered over the weekend.

I knew there was a reason I got the Tablet PC for work

I did a silly thing and tried to upgrade the site, it’s all a bit broken at the moment (hence the missing categories). abnormal service will resume soon (i hope).

Right I’m off to bed now… here are some quite cool nerdy pictures, showing different ways of putting information on a map.

World wide Social Network popularity.

Firefox in Europe.

Phone calls from New York around the world

all because i was looking for this… the daylight map. with up to date clouds an everything. Just like in the west wing.

One thing you notice when you work in the public sector, is the love of league tables. If something can be measured then it is (sometime if it can’t we still try). and if you have a measure for something then you can put them all together in a league table.

Being web doesn’t excuse you from this league table obsession, in-fact it’s all automated. thanks to sitemorse - A company who have realised that measuring things is one thing. put them in a league table and you’ve got the public sector hooked, it doesn’t really matter how or what you measure.

Sitemorse measure the accessibility, function, code, performance and something else* of a website, every month they do this for all local goverment websites and make a league table. Liverpool.gov.uk was first once, and then it wasn’t nothing changed but the scores did. Over the last few months it’s been quite low [for us]. Mainly because Sitemorse a company who measure websites, decided that the way MessageLabs a company who handle email didn’t do it they way they thought they should- this ment our website had poor performance.

We talked to Sitemorse, and we talked to MessageLabs and came to the conclusion that changing the email system for a league table is silly - so we didn’t.

This month liverpool.gov.uk is 32nd. We haven’t changed anything. infact according to sitemorse it’s worse than last month, but we’ve gone up. It’s all very odd and it might sound like sour-grapes; but we (the webteam) don’t care any more about this league table.

We care about the quality of the site. but not about how it performed for a few hours one day at some point in the month (you get marked down if sites you link to are down during the test… a bit hard to control).

Of course a lot of this highlights the silliness of league tables and the supposed choice they offer people, but if you live in Liverpool, what use is it for you to go to South Bedfordshire website to find out about your leisure centres?

“so that’s why Liverpool got slated by the audit commission“

Sitemorse have recently started branching out and now do league tables for banks, and news sites. I wish them luck, but who is going to change there bank because the website isn’t top of a league table?

*none of this mesures how easy it is to find or do things on the site.