ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

Yeah, I’m blogging about blogging. How narcissistic, self-indulgent and generally wanky can you get?
Well hang on a minute, I’m trying to make a serious point here — I know there’s a number of people read my site who aren’t bloggers, and who don’t really know how blogging works, and that the vast majority of comments […]

Read: Blogging for Non-Bloggers »

The more astute among you will have noticed that back in September I had a post entitled Antoine Sibierski, referring to the Frenchman we’d just signed on transfer deadline day. You might have guessed that I wasn’t overly impressed with this signing, particularly as the post started with:
I’m sorry, who?My original posting
Obviously, now that he’s […]

Read: Sorry, Antoine »

I noted on the BBC’s Education part of their news site that a school teacher was asking the Education for the right to use Creationist educational materials.
Okay, so after reading the first paragraph, my jaw was bouncing off the floor, but by the end of the article it sounded like a remarkably sound idea, particularly […]

Read: Creationism: Let It Be The Light! »

I had been planning on taking another little look at what was happening with the old Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) over the next week or so but gosh darn it, Joe Clark has beaten me to it (which reminds me, have you donated any money to his micropatronage project yet?).
Very well, rather than do […]

Read: WCAG 2: The Emperor Defends His New Clothes »

There’s been a certain amount of fuss in the press over this in the last few days, because that Tony Blair Prime Minister chappie has come out and said that he feels that slavery was a jolly bad thing, and that he expresses sorrow over the fact Britain has had a slave-trading history, saying that […]

Read: Slavery: It Wasn’t Me »

I’m a Gateshead boy, born and bred. I’m proud of the place where I live. I’m proud of being from the North East as a whole, and from Gateshead specifically, and I think I’ve got lots of reasons to justify this. But it’s a lot easier to justify now than it used to be…
When I […]

Read: Gateshead, my Gateshead »

I bought a couple of newspapers on Friday morning to read about Newcastle’s stunning victory over Celta Vigo which means we’re guaranteed European football into the New Year — and unless Fenerbahçe manage to win both of their remaining games and we lose our final game we’ll also go through as group winners. And it’s […]

Read: Steve Harmison’s Balls in The Times »

I’ve been wanting to share this one with you for a while, but it’s taken me quite a while to get round to it. Basically, you answer a pile of questions, and then the Dante Inferno test will tell you which level of Dante’s Inferno you’ll be sent to, assuming that Dante’s epic poem The […]

Read: Dante’s Inferno Meme »

… to tell your government that you don’t want hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money being spent on websites which don’t meet the basic specifications they were asked to meet — and in order to bring them up to speed, more of our public money will need to be spent.
It’s your money, and […]

Read: Your Country Needs You »

Fred the barman is just standing idly behind the bar one monday afternoon, drying some glasses when a stunning redhead walks up to him. She leans over the bar — showing a considerable amount of cleavage in her low-cut top — and reaches out to touch him.
“Are you the landlord?”, she asks, idly running her […]

Read: Friday Joke: The Lucky Barman »