All posts by Mike

Leicester Mayor-Off

I’m going to review Leicester’s Mayoral candidates statements in order they are in the little book I got. You can read along here if you like: 

Barbara Potter, Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts

Leicester Independent Councillors Against Cuts are against cuts. She thinks that YOU are also AGAINST cuts. Which YOU probably are generally. I think they’re basically Labour defectors who have mad socialist ideas like “not gutting public services” and “socialism”. Anyway she is bothered about traffic and maybe even voting the Mayor away because who needs it anyway? AND CAPITAL LETTERS. and also YOU

Peter Soulsby, Labour

Sir Peter Soulsby is currently both Mayor and Emperor of Leicester.  He is both loved (by his wife) and reviled (also by his wife) and was elected 4 years ago on a platform of being in the Labour Party. Sir Pete, or Spete, boasts about how he hasn’t shut all the libraries yet and we still have bin men. He promises 3000 more jobs (before or after the ones lost at the council?) and houses and sunshine and happiness. He offers an “ambitious vision of Leicester’s future” which given the pedestrian nature of his stated aims scares me somewhat

Adrian Barnes, Liberal Democrats

Adrian wears glasses. He has a nice black suit and a purple tie. He is on a yellow background. He wants to be mayor of Leicester. His statement is written at a slight angle, to give the appearance of a letter written on a separate piece of paper. He will work really hard.

Willem “Dutch” Veldhuizen, UK Independence Party

Willem “Dutch” Veldhuizen – not to be confused with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Predator  - is not Dutch. He is British. And will stay that way. He just has a Dutch name and is called Dutch. Like Dutch out of Predator, however, he has been in a warzone, and is against uncontrolled immigration. He has done all of the jobs, including being an Investment Analyst, which has made him good economics but not at writing. He is fighting his campaigns on the twin evils of political corruption and bus lanes and his pages look a bit like a royal wedding commemorative tea towel.

Avtar Singh, Independent

Avtar does not have  a photo and his pages are just text – and yet this is still much more interesting than the Lib Dem pages. He’s an anti-politics politician who likes e-petitions and direct democracy. His suggestions – which will not be forced! – and include building an underground railway – have been brilliantly thought out over about half an hour. He is mad. I like him.

Tim Grayson, Green Party

Tim lives in Leicester. Tim speaks in the third person, and joined the Green party because he is normal and they are normal. His ideas about direct democracy and voting are suspiciously similar to Avtar Singh’s which makes me wonder whether they are the same person trying to hedge their bets. His policies are basically the kind of stuff that the Labour party talked about and did in the olden days before someone said “but who is making money off this??” and they were like “you’re right what an unsustainable idea lets sell off the buses to large multinationals”

Paul Bremner, Conservatives

Paul thinks Leicester school’s are rubbish and that’s Labours fault. He will sort that out. Paul reckons all the types of business in the world (small, medium and large) will want to set up in Leicester because the current government is so awesome. He also wants a referendum on his own job, which is a bad career move, but then he also says he’s not a career politician so that makes sense.

 

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Vote-Me-Quiz

Please partake in the following quiz to determine who you should vote for in the next General Election which is happening in your future.

1) Are you a racist?
a) Yes, I am a massive racist
b) No, I am not a racist
c) I am not a racist I just like some racist things stop saying that makes me a racist

2) Whose fault was that whole recession thing?
a) The Bankers, colluding with a cryogenically frozen copy of Hitler’s brain
b) Gordon Brown, working alone
c) Oh loads of things; bad loans, bad regulation, bad decisions… too much emphasis on the banking sector; Spider-Man 3; the release of the iPhone; Twitter; cheap credit; bad debt
d) Foreigners. and Gordon Brown. And the bankers. And Spider-Man 3.

3) A large megacorporation wants to do some fracking in your garden
a) That’s great; I can use the extra income from the fracking to invest in wealth creation
b) No way! Fracking is bad. Offer to put a wind turbine there instead
c) Something about banks

4) You have been diagnosed with a serious yet hilarious illness and have to go and see your GP. You know that you would not be able to afford the treatment yourself. Would you prefer
a) Free prescriptions for all hard-working families and everyone I know and like
b) It is my fault I am poor; I will die quietly so as not to be a burden upon my superior humans
c) Some kind of very complicated insurance system like they have in america only a bit better maybe I don’t know it’s quite complicated
d) A referendum about staying in the EU
e) GO NORTH

5) You go north. You are in a courtyard. To the left is a WIZARD. On the floor is a MANIFESTO. You are holding a VOTING SLIP
a) GO SOUTH
b) USE MANIFESTO
c) KILL WIZARD

Mostly As: You go SOUTH. You are back in the hospital. It is empty. On the floor is a KIDNEY DIALYSIS MACHINE
Mostly Bs: You use the manifesto, but it has no effect.
Mostly Cs: You kill the wizard, who was actually a metaphor for the political system. There is a riot and you are killed. 

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

New features in PHP7

PHP 7 is coming out soon and is a great improvement on previous versions. There’s been a lot of great movement in the community with plenty of RFCs and the language is definitely moving in the right direction.

Here are some great features that you’ll really want to know about

Support for hats

PHP 7 comes with support for a variety of hats. How? Use this handy method get_hat().

Support for 6

The number 6 is now fully supported in PHP7. Previous uses of the number 6 would result in a T_UNEXPECTED_CHWE error but now they can be inserted into code like any other number. For backwards compatibility two 3 or half a 12 can still be used but these methods will throw a deprecated notice.

get_hat method deprecated

The get_hat method introduced in PHP7 has been deprecated. Use get_hat_real() instead.

new error type E_RETHINK_YOUR_LIFE

A warning for WordPress developers.

Support for line numbers

Following PHP 5.3′s introduction of the goto operator PHP7 now features line numbers. Also available are peek and poke functions, plus the ability to switch into Teletext Mode 7.

Licking your own elbows

PHP7 can lick your own elbows so you no longer need to use the ternary operator.

Reverse execution mode

Add define(“execution_mode”, M_REVERSE); to the top of some files sometimes to set execution mode into reverse. The op-code cache has been completely re-written to allow both forward, reverse and random execution sequences.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World built-in

Hold down A+B+C to play the Sega classic!

get_hat_real() method deprecated

Hats are no longer recommended and will be removed from the next version of PHP. Wearing a hat will result in a E_NOTICE_PROBLEM exception.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

3 Realities of Being A Man Nobody Talks About

1) How difficult urinals are to use

Nothing worse about being a man then when you need to go the toilet and all that’s free are urinals! First, there’s the issue of deciding which one to use – do you choose the one next to the man wall? Or do you just pee against the wall? What about the sink? Some of those sinks might be urinals. Yeah why not. What let go of me leave me alone wait this isn’t the mens. Look it wasn’t me last time you must have be thinking of someone else.

2) Having to hold doors open for women

What’s this about! Women have hands too! This is awful. Not to mention the fact that if you hold the door for a man, they might think that you think they’re a woman and that would be embarrassing for everyone.  You can’t have it both ways ladies. Either hold the door open or don’t but don’t expect me to stand there just because I’m there already.

3) The constant pressure of being right about everything all the time

This is probably the worst thing. President Barack Obama, who is president of the americans, is constantly under pressure to be more right than most men and not even he can do it. Imagine what it’s like for men who aren’t as good as him – it’s far worse. Women will never understand this which is why less women are presidents than men.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

ALIEN SCRIPT

Here is an excerpt from the new draft of the script by me.

SCENE: The future. We are in space. Then we pan back – we are actually in a garden. We pan back some more. A garden in a space ship! A woman is sat there with a girl of about 10. The woman is our heroine ELLEN RIPLEY.

RIPLEY: I’m so glad I managed to get back in time for your 11th birthday. I had an awful nightmare where I couldn’t because of an alien or something.

AMANDA: That’s OK Mom. You got home after an uneventful mission doing mining or whatever it is you do in space. And now we can live happily ever after and stuff.

RIPLEY: Yes. Wait…

RIPLEY winces. She clutches her stomach. It is as if something is trying to burst out of her!! A passing cat hisses. AMANDA screams as we see a bulge in RIPLEY’S stomach

CUT TO

Another spaceship. RIPLEY is now older. It’s the SULACO! The one they’re in in Aliens. HICKS and NEWT and BISHOP are there too! BISHOP has fixed himself.

RIPLEY: What an awful dream. I dreamt that none of this had happened, and then it had. It didn’t make much sense, but it certainly set the scene.

HICKS: Yes. The vivid one about the prison planet where we all died? Or the more confusing one where you died and there was Winona Ryder? Never mind; it was all a dream and it Never Happened.

RIPLEY: Yes; all that happened was the first 2 traumatic things with the aliens, which is much more tolerable. I sure hope no aliens got on board this ship.

BISHOP: That wouldn’t make any sense. The only thing that would make any sense was that this was all a bad, bad dream.

RIPLEY: Wait a second – this is a dream – I’m in my underwear!

BISHOP: Yes; you’ve just come out of cryosleep.

RIPLEY: And I’m in an exam!

RIPLEY is in an EXAM

The person in front of her turns around. It’s an alien! 

ALIEN: Hisssssssssss

A CAT: Hissssssss

BISHOP: Hisssssssss

RIPLEY wakes up. She is on the set of Alien Vs Predator.

RIPLEY: NO! Noooo!!!!

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather