Daily Archives: May 15, 2009

The Konami Code on Facebook – Facebook ‘Easter Egg’ – Secret Facebook trick

Posted by David Hurst on May 15, 2009 None comments

Many years ago, Konami used to include cheat codes or gamepad sequences in their Nintendo games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code). The most famous is:

[UP] [UP] [DOWN] [DOWN] [LEFT] [RIGHT] [LEFT] [RIGHT] [B] [A]

Now if you log into Facebook and click anywhere on the white website background and do this combination:

[UP] [UP] [DOWN] [DOWN] [LEFT] [RIGHT] [LEFT] [RIGHT] [B] [A] [ENTER]

then whenever you press your left mouse button you will get a lens flare effect on the screen.

This is of course completely useless, but it’s nice to see that geekdom is alive and well within the Facebook development team. Now, if only they could spend some time actually working on all the bugs…

Thanks to Emma H. for sharing this.

Esso Petrol Station Sparkford, Somerset – highway robbery is alive and well in Britain

Posted by David Hurst on May 15, 2009 1 comments

I just popped out on the motorbike for a rather filthy lunchtime McD’s with a chum to Sparkford services. Realising I needed fuel, I rode into the Esso station there to fill up, not noticing the price per litre as I did so. I didn’t look at the price on the pump either – you generally don’t look at the pump at all when filling a bike, less you should spill petrol everywhere. I did notice after I had filled up though and nearly fell over.

£1.03 per litre.

The Shell services outside Ilminster are today charging 95.9p per litre. That’s 7p per litre more to fill up my bike at Esso Sparkford than a garage 20 miles down the road. For a family car, it represents between £2.80 and £4.20 more per fill up. Even the Shell garage a stone’s throw from Sparkford services is 5p per litre cheaper.

There is no good reason for this whatsoever. It is nothing more than greedy profiteering. Esso already make billions of dollars in pure profit every year. They don’t need to do this.

Thieves!

The rain in May falls only in the UK

Posted by David Hurst on May 15, 2009 1 comments

What a crap country we live in! Apart from the obvious disadvantages of being a Brit (ludicrous taxation, overcharged for everything, corrupt government etc. etc.), we have to put up with this stupid weather. Monday this week was blue sky, sunshine and high temperatures. I was trapped in the office. I duly booked a half day off for Tuesday, where the sun shone all morning, so we decided to take the boys down to Weymouth. Obviously, by the time we got there it was blowing a gale and raining.

I refused to let this stop our plans so we sat on that beach, with the wind whipping sand into our eyes, shivering our collective rears off, building sand castles. To our credit, we endured the arctic conditions for a good 45 minutes before admitting defeat.

We then slipped over to Portland to eat chips in the car on the top of the hill. It was nice, but it would have been better if the boys could have had a run about and enjoyed the sun that lurks just behind the ever-present mass of grey.

The sun came out again just as we got home.

And now, having endured 3 days of rain already this week, it would seem that it will continue to rain all weekend. It’ll probably rain next week too, and the week after. In fact, it will probably transpire that Monday was in fact the sum total of this year’s “summer”.

What I don’t understand is why our ancestors, when tramping across the delights of Europe in search of a new place to call home, came upon the UK and thought, ‘Yes! This is the place. Rain and mud – that’s the way forward’. So, thanks to that bunch of moronic village idiots, I have to suffer this constant precipitation instead of enjoying the sun that somehow manages to shine without pause on the rest of world.

My invisible new motorcycle boots

Posted by David Hurst on May 15, 2009 None comments

I need new motorcycle boots. The pair of TCX boots I bought are falling apart after six months. Yes, you read that right: SIX MONTHS! A letter is winging its way to TCX as I type.

I decided to head up to George White’s outlet store in Swindon, tieing in the trip with a visit (and ride-out) with a chum who lives up there. We rolled up at 5.20 on Saturday only to find they shut at 5! What a bunch of slack part-timers! 5pm on a Saturday?? I guess I should have checked the website before I left, but frankly it never even occurred to me that any large store would shut that early on a Saturday.

I can’t be arsed to ride all the way up there again – there are no decent routes to take on a bike from Ilminster to Swindon – so I guess it will be another trip to Hein Gericke tomorrow.

[UPDATE: Just had a response from TCX who are replacing my boots! What extraordinarily good customer service. Now I have complete confidence in the brand.]