leslog

Gingerism. I’m sorry, is that a word?

Is gingerism as bad as racism? is currently top of the BBC News most read list.

This is the second article about red-heads in the space of two days. Yesterday’s Gruaniad had a spread picturing famous gingers. I didn’t read it, but I got the impression it was a celebration of gingers, and was in a much more positive tone than the BBC’s gingerism article.

It’s not the vivid ginger it was when a was young, but I like my hair colour. My brother, all in good humour, calls me the ginger ninja from time to time, and this doesn’t bother me though I think there is a twist of an intended mickey-take in there.

Are people really “gingerist”? Bullying aside, I think not. And I don’t think gingerism is in the same league as racism. Where do you draw the line between bullying/banter and gingerism? Most people making gingerist comments are going to be at the banter end of the scale, and red-heads who can’t take that need to get a backbone.

I don’t think the “drunken yob” in the article was gingerist. He was talking like any man in his situation, drunk and thinking with his nob. If the woman wasn’t ginger, he would still have spoken to her, made a comment about her tits, and she would have felt exactly the same way. A-holes like this exist. Get over it.

Last night was the 11th annual Webby Awards ceremony, held in New Yoik. A glance down the winners list pointed me to these lovely sites:

Moto colors
Awesomely tasty Flash application - get in touch with your creative side.

ZWOK!
It’s a Flash multi-player game, basically the same as Worms. I’m not any good but it’s simple procrastinator’s fun.

It’s unnaturally cold for May, isn’t it? I had to put socks on in bed last night, and they’ve put the heating back on at work.

Over the bank holiday, Gir and I watched 24 on DVD. So addictive it was, we watched the entire first season in the space of two days. People had said to me before that it’s a great show, and I would like it, and my response was always, “yeah but I don’t want to get sucked in now, because there’s like five seasons to catch up with and I don’t have time for that”. They were all right, I do like it. I was also right and now have to find a way of getting through the next four seasons without wasting away. Plus, I’m feeling super-guilty that I didn’t do any of the things I had intended for the weekend.

But why is it so great?

• It does “trust no one” way better than The X-Files.
• Cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
• Some of the characters do stupid things that have you shouting at the TV, but then they do something smart and redeem themselves. This shouldn’t really be a good thing, but I do like it. We have connected with the characters if we are shouting at them what to do.
• It keeps you thinking and guessing. The number of times Gir guessed correctly, though, he could have written it.
• Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is a superb hero… and the new Fox Mulder.

We’ve already started on season 2.

And later, I will wear my new Lego Star Wars t-shirt

Just me laugh that MS has not set its own site as something you can trust.

A couple of years ago, Gir and I were thinking of holidaying in Florence/Rome, and though we never went, I’m still keen on going at some point, and me hating the thought of not being able to understand the language at all, have decided to swot up.

This may well turn out to be one of those personal projects that never get finished, but a week ago, I bought a “teach yourself beginners Italian” book and accompanying CD and have since been plugged in at every opportunity. So far, I’m absorbing it quite well, and having mastered the essential cheating-man’s phrase, “parla englese?” I have reached unit four, which introduces adjectives, likes, dislikes, preferences and numbers over 20. I’m quite enjoying the learning experience right now; if it lasts, there’ll be another update when I’ve got to the milestone of unit 10.

Another post for my own future reference, and maybe it’ll help someone else when google comes by. I spent a very long time looking for the answer.

I have a DropDownList, and when value 999 is selected I want the Textbox in my UpdatePanel to become visible. Worked a charm with this:

But, for reasons I won’t go into, I needed to dynamically declare the trigger in code. So, what I have finally come to is this:

Hurrah. The bit I was missing was RegisterAsynchPostBackControl.

So, on Friday after work, Gir brought home our Wii. We had half an hour before we would need to get out the house again for the evening’s boozing, so we had a quick game of bowling. This is the first time I’ve ever played Wii, and this is the score sheet from that first game. Honestly.

At frame 5, I was feeling the pressure and crumbled mid-game, but otherwise I can’t help but feel a bit smug. Not bad for my first go.

Just had to look up the HTML character entity for a right arrow → which pleasingly is →. I’ll not forget that one in a hurry.

Also very memorable is ∴ for the therefore symbol ∴ though I doubt I’d ever need to use that in real life.

When will they introduce smiley characters into the specification? That would be so cool.