Robert Hampton

It’s been nearly a week since I last posted, and I feel obliged to write something. Unfortunately there’s not much to report, other than a comical incident on Thursday night when I sat down slightly too quickly in a low chair and split my trousers. Luckily (for me and everyone else present) I wasn’t going commando.

I’m not sure about the blog generally now. Should this be a diary-type blog where I talk about things that happen in my life, however uninteresting they may be to everyone else? Or should I be giving my own take on issues of earth-shattering importance, even though no-one really cares about my opinions? Or should I just take a break from blogging altogether for a while?

Each of the above options is tempting in its own way.

Presenting the RHMeUK Review of the Year 2006! Just start here and keep clicking through to the next page until you get back here. It’s like The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, but without Jimmy Carr — so it’s actually much better than The Big Fat Quiz of the Year.

Anyway, my New Year’s resolution for 2007 is to write lots of interesting, compelling blog entries and not keep falling back on embedded YouTube videos. However, there’s a few hours of 2006 left, so here’s my current favourite song (Century Plant) from my current favourite film (Camp).

Hurrah! The red and green colour scheme and tacky Christmas clipart have been brought out of storage — with the added bonus this year of a toe-curlingly bad picture of me on the front page.

Ys, the countdown to Christmas has well and truly begun. Unfortunately, before we get there, we have to endure a month’s worth of “PC killjoys abolish Christmas” headlines in the tabloids.

There’s all sorts of lunacy going around, including the Daily Mail’s assertion yesterday (article not linked online) that there are few Christmas cards available with religious themes (surely just a case of manufacturers responding to the market?). They even went so far as to call for those who want religious cards to boycott non-religious cards (so, you’re going to refuse to buy something that you weren’t going to buy anyway?). Meanwhile, Richard Littlejohn is no doubt waiting to pounce on anyone who writes “Season’s Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas” in their cards.

I think the “War on Christmas” is largely a myth (“bollocks” would be the less polite way of phrasing it). I think there have been a few isolated cases where well-meaning but misguided people have done something or said something negative about Christmas, which then got amplified and whipped up into a media frenzy by certain organisations and individuals with a political agenda (or who simply want to sell books). I resent Christmas being politicised in this way, especially by organisations such as the Daily Mail and Fox News, for whom the central Christmas tenets of “peace” and “goodwill” are not usually high on the agenda.

I’m not a Christian, but I’m quite happy to respect people who are. In the meantime, I will celebrate Christmas in my own way as a secular event (and before anyone complains about that, remember that Christmas is a restyling of a Pagan festival which was held every December long before Jesus appeared on the scene). I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels that way.

The Guardian had a good piece on the subject on Friday. If you’re not happy to believe the sandal-wearing hippies at that paper, you could just try walking along the street I live on, where already several houses (including my own) are bedecked in ridiculously over-the-top Christmas lights. If there is a War on Christmas, it’s a one-sided affair.

So there.

Yes, I know having a noisy front page is annoying, but you know what? I don’t care! Mwahaha!

Happy Guy Fawkes Night, everybody!

I upgraded to Firefox 2.0 recently. Short review: Internet Explorer 7 had almost caught up, but with 2.0, Firefox is now back in the lead again.

I spent the afternoon tinkering with MadMaze, to try and overcome my main niggle with it; namely that, in this day and age, no piece of software, no matter how dreadful, should be running in Mode 9. (320×256 graphics resolution! 16 colours!)

Messing around in BBC BASIC is still, after all these years, quite good fun. I’d like to get back into hobbyist programming, even though RISC OS, the platform on which I cut my teeth (requiring many hours of expensive dental surgery), seems to be in decline. Ho-hum.

Anyway, WordPress 2.0.5 has just been released, so I need to go and install it, hopefully without breaking anything in the process.

So, have you downloaded Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 7 yet? I have, and I’m using it right now to write this post. RHMeUK, naturally, looks wonderful in it.

I’m not generally a Microsoft fan, but impressions so far are quite favourable. The new user interface is going to take a bit of getting used to, and I’m not sure it was necessary to move all the toolbars, menus and buttons around. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to switch my allegiance from Firefox, but it’s certainly a big improvement on what’s gone before.

Now that IE7 supports it, you have no excuse to ignore my RSS feed. Have you subscribed yet? Of course you have!

I’ve been getting a lot of “mail delivery failed” notices over the last couple of hours. I have a horrible feeling some filthy spammer has sent out an e-mail with my address in the “From” field.

Yesterday I renewed one of my spare domains for another year. One of these days I might get around to actually doing something with it.

I’ve upgraded the WordPress blog software on this site to the just-released latest version, 2.0.3. It incorporates a new security method with an unfortunate (to British ears) name.

Oh, hello — what’s this big parcel then?

Yes, it’s a job lot of track and accessories from Hattons to start my layout. Hurrah!

Now’s as good a time as any to mention that I’ve been updating and expanding the model railway section of the site. Go and have a look. Unless, of course, you don’t care (that’ll be most of you, then).