Doing the bare minimum and maintaining the status quo is nothing to be proud of, Avanti. Accessibility is about so much more than complying with regulatory/legal requirements! And meeting your legal obligations is certainly nothing to boast about.
Tone-deaf PR statement #14558:
“There has not been a reduction in wheelchair spaces on any of our trains and the layout has not been changed either. All our trains comply with current legislation regarding provision for wheelchair spaces onboard.”
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
If you were my shiny @raspberrypi.com Pi 5 in a nice red case that I’ve not seen for a few months, where would you hide?
Perhaps there should be some sort of ‘lost in the house’ insurance policy? For a small extra fee at purchase, you get a replacement Pi sent out if you can’t find the original!
Can anyone recommend an up-to-date minimalist social media icon set? The ones on my website (rightsaidjames.com) are well out of date and were created before Threads, Bluesky etc. came into being!
New domain-based username, who dis @rightsaidjames.com
On the plus side, adaptive cruise control is pretty impressive - didn't really understand what it was, until the car managed a staggered junction for me by slowing down and speeding back up again as the cars in front made their turnings 🤯
Picked up our new car two days before we went on holiday last week, driving an automatic for the first time to and from Northumberland was a wild ride 😅
Took me about half a week to remember not to brake to change down gears when approaching junctions!
(Something to do with ‘shallow refreshes’ when navigating between NextJS routes, which is a thing I am aware of but is not top of my priority list of things to understand!)
Strange things I’ve written on Slack that the recipient has somehow understood, no. 2683:
@[dev] I'd appreciate your eyes on this fix because I feel like you have a keener sense of the deepness of the refreshes
Really enjoying building my Lego Gameboy so far, here’s where I got to in an hour or so of careful instruction-following!
Trying to resist the urge to invest in one of the upcoming kits to turn this into an actual Gameboy, but the @remysharp.com shaped devil on my shoulder is awfully persuasive!
It got my attention though, so I’d consider it a job well done 😀
Momentarily confusing @ohgodwhatnow.bsky.social Patreon notification - my card was declined, but I get the paid content nonetheless? 😅
Also amused to discover that there's a @b3ta.com / @robmanuelyeah.bsky.social link in there too!
Are your Year 8 students behaving more like your Year 9s? Are your Year 6s seeming more grown up than they used to be?
There is a scientific reason for that: puberty is starting earlier.
So why is it happening and how is it playing out in schools?
www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
Wiki article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckitt...
Article in The Journal (aka @chroniclelive.co.uk):
www.thefreelibrary.com/Fictional+we...
PRWatch summary:
www.prwatch.org/spin/2005/10...
Original @tomcoates.bsky.social blog posts:
plasticbag.org/archives/200...
plasticbag.org/archives/200...
This in turn led to a grovelling apology and the hurried mothballing of the Barry Scott blog.
Will add a trail of surprisingly-still-alive links in the thread, but I guess the main point of my thread is that these 'historical' links still work perfectly, despite being literally 20 years old!
Found some ancient web history while reading the Cillit Bang sections of the Reckitt Wikipedia article (don't ask): in the mid-2000s they hired a PR agency to start a fake blog for Barry Scott, who then went on to make jokey/tasteless comments on a heartfelt blog post by @tomcoates.bsky.social.
It seems like it’s an occupational hazard of issue-driven parties that this type of thing happens on a semi-regular basis. Not dissimilar to divisions within Your Party on LGBT+ rights, casual/overt racism in Reform grassroots etc. The importance of ‘the cause’ puts leaders in difficult positions!
I’m no expert on Taylor Swift - my knowledge of her discography is poor to average at best - but the new album seems… good? Nice vibes, decent singing, interesting lyrics, varied soundworlds… what’s not to like?
“Hi mate, I need thousands of ‘TG Jones’ shop signs ASAP, various sizes. Matte plastic, white text on blue, pick the blandest shades & fonts you have. No need for any other text. If it will save me a few quid, don’t bother with any design principles. Thanks mate, pleasure doing business with you.”
On an extremely related note, autumnal walks along the canal path are wonderful in theory, up until the moment when you’re half an hour from home and light rain turns into torrential rain 🙈
At least I now know the waterproofing on my winter coat is still intact 😆
I like Mr Brightside just as much as the next millennial, it’s a modern classic, but can we PLEASE stop playing it at wedding discos? It’s a song about cheating/jealousy - the protagonist imagines themselves watching helplessly while their partner goes to bed with a stranger!
Pick another song FFS
Similarly, it’s great that my phone is IPXWhatever rated for waterproofing, but it would be great if I could type out a quick message with slightly damp hands!
Headphones with touchscreens for media control are a great idea… up until you’re walking in heavy rain and every third raindrop triggers Siri, pauses your audio or skips your podcast back 30 seconds 🤦
First they came for the late night comedians etc. etc.
Vera denies all knowledge of a foolish stumble, and has North Yorkshire’s top libel lawyers on standby, ready to ruthlessly pursue anyone who says otherwise!
🎶 When you're sad and feeling blue,
with nothing better to do,
don't just sit there feeling stressed,
take on the little trip on...
the National Expreeeesssss! 🎶
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUCf...
Thank you, glad you found it helpful! There’s a lot of detailed ARIA live resources available online, but I thought it was good to summarise my approach for deciding how and when to use it!
Was it just me who quite liked Windows ME?
Sure, it crashed a little more often than it should, but I was willing to trade a bit of instability for a delicious taste of the future!
I have strong memories of helping to deal with this type of content almost every day as a volunteer TSR moderator. That experience, as well as the Samaritans training you sent us on, has stuck with me ever since!
