blog.eliotsykes.com

My wife and I talk in different units, found this handy little translation aid this morning.

Printable Conversion Chart –

Update: US expats may save some frustration with this conversion chart from uk-yankee.com

Forgot to post this when I originally found it, taken from Zest September 2008, and they quote www.petruzziperformance.com.

Yes, I know Zest is written for women.

Just been reminded of this Spring forum post I made back in 2007 by Matthias, a developer who’s using its code (thanks Matthias).

Measuring and displaying response times to user http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?t=44363

The problem was displaying the response time to the user, where the response time included the time to render the view.

The trick was finding a way to modify the view after it had been generated to include the time it took to render the view in the first place.

The final solution uses a filter to replace a preset string in the rendered view with the response time.  The code is still in use today and works fine.

I just bought the Which? Instant Download guide to choosing a vacuum cleaner for £1.99 after my existing one has gone bang.

Overall the guide gives helpful advice on picking a vacuum, I’m glad I bought it, but you’ll be annoyed if you try to find some of the best buys Which? recommend.

The Dyson DC-18 Slim Allergy and most of the Miele cylinder vacuum cleaners are no longer available.

When I looked for them instead I found new and, at time of writing, untested versions of the older models, so you have no way of knowing if they measure up to their older incarnations.

Here’s where you can purchase choosing a vacuum cleaner .

Just felt like altering the background here this evening and found Evan Eckard’s wonderful DinPattern.

Retro Leaves background tile from DinPattern

Evan generously shares some of the most original and beautiful backgrounds I could find.  If you like to be able to touch your background, limited prints of some of Evan’s work is available on Etsy.

Need multiple DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping beans in your Spring application context?  Consider voting for this:

Allow multiple DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping beans – move AbstractControllerUrlHandlerMapping.isEligibleForMapping(..) to AbstractDetectingUrlHandlerMapping
http://jira.springframework.org/browse/SPR-5576

There’s some code there that’ll help you roll your own solution in the meantime.

You've covered up the sensor with your hand for the last time Mr. Bond

Whilst helping organise my brother’s Stag Do I’ve been looking for a laser tag place near his home.

Laser Arena, a database of the UK’s laser tag centres, was recommended to me by Matt, a complete stranger who’s details I found online. He used to work at the old Cambridge laser tag (closed in 2006 unfortunately) and was kind enough to help out a complete stranger, so thank you Matt.

Laser Arena has a useful postcode search to find your two nearest laser tag centres.  If you’re looking for a laser tag centre in the UK they’ll be able to help you.

Visit Laser Arena

Safirul Alredha is responsible for one of the best tumblelog themes for WordPress.

The theme download from Safirul’s site above is currently not compatible with WordPress 2.7.

As I wanted this theme for WordPress 2.7 I’ve tweaked it as advised by some of the commenters (thanks all).  You can now download tumblelog theme for WordPress 2.7 here.

I’ve emailed Safirul to let him know.

Update 28 Feb 2009
The only change I made was to rename the post_class function to post_class_tumblelog.  The functionality I need from the theme works for me fine in WordPress 2.7, however please note I’ve found the posting of photos does not work, you have to do that as a normal post and place it in the Photo category.

The theme as it stands now probably works well enough in WordPress 2.7 for most people, although Safirul has explained there are further changes to be made for it to work fully in WordPress 2.7.

Update 25 April 2010
This theme does not work with WordPress 2.9+, if you do use it with 2.9+ it is likely to give you big problems from what I’ve heard from visitors to this page. I don’t recommend doing this. I’ve not used this theme for some time so I don’t have an answer for how to make it work, however if you’ve successfully got this theme working with WordPress 2.9+ then please comment below with the details or a link to how you did it.

During my search for a new blog theme I stumbled on LaunchPad  from Ian Stewart of ThemeShaper.  I thought it looked interesting and am posting it here in the hope it’ll help you in your endeavours.  You use it when your web site is under construction to collect e-mail addresses and RSS subscribers.

LaunchPad WordPress theme