This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

The man, the legend, Matthew Garrett now has his own Matthew Garrett Facts at angryfacts.com. Find out what motivates the angriest man alive. Marvel at how he can be so tall and so thin all at once. Ask him which laptop he'd recommend, like he's never heard that question before. Wonder at how he'll soon be Dr. Matthew Garrett, if you please. "Matthew Garrett invented the eye." Pure class.

You will be pleased to hear that the video and audio recordings of the main stage talks at LugRadio Live 2006 are now available! Go see for yourself how the talks went for Sarah Ewen, Stephen Lamb, Simon Phipps, Ted Haegar, Jon Fautley, Danny O'Brien, Bill Thompson, Michael Meeks, Simon Willison, Mark Shuttleworth, Mike Hearn, Bruno Bord, Malcolm Parsons, Matthew Walster, Justin Hornsby, Michael Erskine and Mirco Muller, and read reviews and see photos of the event. http://www.lugradio.org/live/2006/ And there are only 131 days to go until LugRadio Live 2007! Prepare yourselves: it's coming.

Well, I'm at Skycon. I'm flying the LugRadio flag by myself for today, though; Ade can't make it at all, and Matt and Jono missed the plane through some incompetence bad luck. So I have to drink four times the amount of beer. I can do that. I'm speaking tomorrow; Matt and Jono will be here then too, so they won't miss their talks. Skycon people: you don't get rid of LugRadio that easily.

I've got a Belkin F5D7050 wireless USB adapter. It didn't work under Ubuntu. This is because Edgy ships an old fucked version of the driver. If Ubuntu is loading the "rt73usb" driver, and it's not working for you, that's why. Download and install the CVS version as per the Ubuntu wiki instructions and it works perfectly. Superb.

The LugRadio team proudly presents "The importance of being critical", episode 12 of season 4 of LugRadio. Those of you who are already part of the LugRadio community will of course know about this, but those of you who come here for web stuff rather than Linux stuff may be interested in the big discussion in this show about web applications, desktop applications, why use one rather than the other, and me ranting about what "progressive enhancement" means. In particular, I'd be interested in comments on any full-on web apps that genuinely use progressive enhancement techniques, in that they work with simple or text-only or mobile browsers but provide a better experience to those people with modern ones, and they do something actually proper. I spoke about using progressive enhancement to improve existing apps a little, but was challenged to name a full-on app doing something complex like Google Spreadsheets that would work without Ajax, and couldn't do so. Help appreciated.

Let the celebrations commence! Let fireworks rain from the skies! Lock up your daughters! Throw open your patio doors and cry to the night, because

LugRadio Live 2007 is happening!

Yes, on the 7th and 8th July 2007, in the Lighthouse Media Centre, Wolverhampton, UK, the world's greatest open source event is back for another thundering year. You can go and look at the new LRL07 site to find out more. Registration for tickets isn't yet open: what's important right now is that we have a Call For Papers. If you're interested in speaking at LugRadio Live, and following in the footsteps of web gods like Simon Willison and Drew McLellan or software gods like Matthew Garrett and Mike Hearn or philosophical gods like Simon Phipps and Mark Shuttleworth, then we want to hear from you! Go look at the Call For Papers page to find out how to contact us; if you've got something cool you want to demo, or some software to show off, or something you want to talk about, then call us. Plus, if you don't like the site design then it's my fault, so blame me and not the rest of the LR team :-) This year's going to be bigger and better and more exciting than previous years, and it's still a fiver for two solid days of unreal entertainment, talks, BOFs, demos, beer, and a live LugRadio recording. Get stuck in! We're also interested in people who might want to join the crew. Being in the crew means that you (a) get to take orders (b) fetch and carry stuff (c) get a really cool and exclusive t-shirt (d) feel a sense of warmth and well-being at being a key part of the LugRadio community and (e) get in free. If you're interested in being part of the crew, drop us a mail! Prepare yourselves. Only 149 days to go!

Just a rant. I'm filling in a form for travel insurance through the Post Office, and I've just got to the "sign up for an account" bit. And that form annoys the hell out of me. First: you're the bloody Post Office! You make tons of money selling postcode data to all and sundry! Make it so I can just type in my postcode and it looks up my address! Fergawdsake, if they're not using it themselves, why would I want to licence it? Second, I bet that damned nearly all their customers are UK people. So why not preselect "United Kingdom" in the dropdown? And on that subject, why have that dropdown in the first place? I'm sure someone, once, at some dim point in the past, grabbed a list of all the countries they could find and stuck it in a <select> element, and since then people have just copied it. Round and round the web. Why do you care if they're in Anguila or Aruba? Does anyone ever actually report on this? Especially since they're not passing back an ID, which means this isn't a database lookup; it's passing back the name. Especially since most people for this site will be in the UK; why not just let non-UK types type in the name of their country? Who cares if they spell it wrong? I'll bet there are ambiguous countries on that list, and countries that no longer exist, and there are countries that do exist that aren't on it. Stop copying this huge country list into your websites! Especially since, according to their terms and conditions, "the products and services featured on this website are only available within the United Kingdom, or in relation to postings from the United Kingdom". Thirdly, I was really, sorely tempted, when I saw the "I would like to be known as" box, to enter "Grandmaster Ramrod". Is any of this ever going to get any better?