Cockeyed Optimist

I won’t comment any more than to agree with our friend below!

See you all later!

I quite often order something over the internet (like, I’m sure, many of you do), and one of the items that I’m frequently asked to provide is my telephone number. I have no objection to supplying this for the most part, but sometimes the target site raises an objection, claiming that what I have entered is not a proper telephone number.

Many of the sites are in the US, and they seem to assume that all their customers are too, so they want the number in the US format, e.g., “1 nnn mmmm pppp” (where the “1″ is the country code for the US); and so the site won’t accept anything else.

Now, in Australia, where I live, the numbers go like this: “pppp qqqq” — for calls within the same area code; or “0r pppp qqqq” — to call other area codes, where “0r” is the area code (there are only a few area codes in Australia, so there is always a leading zero); and for international calls “+61 r pppp qqqq”, where 61 is the country code for Australia — note that the leading zero in the area code gets dropped. (The plus sign, “+”, is an indication that you have also to use a special prefix for international calling — some handsets convert the plus automatically. Very few internet sites recognize the plus, so we soon learn not to try it.)

Other countries have different formats again; my relatives live in Poland, and there the phone numbers are like: “48 aa bbbbbbb”, where “48″ is the country code for Poland, “aa” is the city code, and the remaining seven digits are the actual phone number.

While I’m whingeing about this, I might as well have another moan about US assumptions. My wife edits a small Haiku magazine (see the paper wasp website), and people send orders and contributions in by snail mail sometimes, although email is encouraged. You’d be surprised how many of them send self-addressed envelopes for replies with US postage stamps attached, assuming that a US stamp will be accepted anywhere in the world. Well, it isn’t!

So let me make an appeal to those firms and individuals who want to make sales in countries other than their own — make sure that the format of whatever data you are looking for is flexible enough!

This epic has now reached Chapter 22.

There have been dramatic developments — now read on!

While I have been posting this work, I have been preparing a parallel e-book version, which I will offer for downloading when it is complete.

I am also thinking about eventually producing a printed-on-paper version.

If you would like to comment on these proposals, please feel free to do so, below.

Happy reading!

I am not medically qualified and not a dietician, so I disclaim any authority for the contents of this post.

However, it seems to be a genuine warning from a reputable source, so I thought I would help to spread this information a little wider.

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener found in diet soft drinks (sodas) and other processed drinks and foods, under several different brand names that you will recognize when you read the linked article.

Read this: Stay away from this stuff…!

And here is another reference.

Makes you think, doesn’t it!

Over the last few days, I have:

• Updated “My Story” and “Kit and the Beeman”
  • “My Story” is now up to Part 10, taking the saga to the point at which I retired from the University of Queensland, and beyond, almost up to the present.
  • “Kit and the Beeman” is up to Chapter 18; Stephen and his companions have just bought a ship and are about to embark on their quest proper.
• Added some useful WordPress plugins
  • The name of “wordpress-automatic-upgrade” says it all, really. I used it to bring my blog up to date, with WordPress version 2.3.1. — Here it is.It really is automatic and no fuss. I can recommend it to all WordPress bloggers.
  • “wp-db-backup” is again self-explanatory. Advisable for weekly use, at the very least. Your updated blog and database are sent to you by email. No worries! Here’s the site.
  • “SK2″ is a bit cryptic - what this stands for is “Spam Karma 2″. Before I installed this, I was getting at least 30 automatic spam comments every day. Now, after SK2, we are down to 2 or 3 GENUINE comments every day.Have a look at the author’s site. Apart from the plugin, it has other interesting content.

The most useful and important of these are “wordpress-automatic-upgrade”, “wp-db-backup” and “SK2″.

So, I haven’t actually been as idle as it might have appeared!

(And I do have other things that occupy me, as well as blogging.)

Good luck!