Flipflops.org

I always wish aeroplane windows were a bit bigger, and am unable to understand the people who do not stare out of them as you take of and land. It doesn’t matter how many times you have flown, people who just read the in-flight magazine must have dead imaginations.

Affect. Effect. I can never remember what the difference between them is. This really bugs me, so much so that this week I actually when seeking an answer. I asked Wolfram Alpha; it was able to tell me the population of the town where I live; it was able to tell me how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin, but it was unable to help me with Affect and Effect.

Eventually Grammar Girl helped me out with a picture of an Aardvark. I still felt it was not enough. I found this:

affect is the act
effect is the result

(here)

That is the best so far, it is a functional mnemonic, but I feel it lack a certain something. Hannah, where are you? Whenever Ben and I ran into gramatical conubdrums you were always there to help with a handy diagram we could pin up on the notice board.

Christmas is coming and it’s time to send out Christmas Cards. I really like this years batch and cutting out snowmen and sticking them down with a bit of glue is a nice way to spend these cold winter evenings.

The other day I needed a list of UK post towns matched up to postcode areas, which I found on wikipedia.

Anyway I have tidied it up and put it into two database tables postcode and town

You can download the SQL file here towns.zip

Hope it comes in useful.

Everything is looking a bit grey on the page lately. I’ve been meaning to put up a bit of colour for a while, we did have the odd flash of summer I suppose…