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

It’s an interesting question, and it’s one that is going to be asked more and more often in the coming years.
What happens when the boundaries between personal and professional identity start to blur?
On this site — and indeed in other locations — I tend not to mention who I work for, other than that it’s […]

Read: Social & Corporate: Personal & Professional »

According to the NCC, software licences are unfair, partly because they’re virtually incomprehensible, and partly because you don’t get a chance to see what the conditions for using the product are until after you’ve bought it.
Well of course that’s unfair. I said exactly that about 18 months ago when I launched my personal campaign for […]

Read: Software Licences are unfair »

I am a believer in web accessibility. To me, this basically means attempting to make sites so that they are usable by as many people as possible; primarily avoiding discrimination users with disabilities, but also where possible seeking to ensure that sites can be used across different platforms and browsers, and so on.
Some people wouldn’t […]

Read: Whose (guide) line is it anyway? »

It just ain’t funny.
Apologies for those of you who are used to my lighter tone, but as Paul Canning’s blogging again, I get to find out some of the unpleasant aspects of our world that I otherwise wouldn’t come across.
Athough gays suffer murderous persecution ( a ‘deathzone’) in Iraq and many other nations, these […]

Read: Executed For Homosexuality »

This is one I’m sure I’ve done before so I’m going to bend the rules a little. Well, flout them, to be more precise.
Right, so here’s the ‘rules’…

Link back to the person who tagged you.
Post these rules on your blog.
Share six unimportant things about yourself.
Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
Let […]

Read: More Memey-ness »

Take one two-year old. Place him in a bedroom and tell him to go to sleep.
What do you have five minutes later? A child that has climbed out of bed, climbed onto the dressing table, reached up to a high shelf and picked up a jar of Sudocrem (usually used to combat nappy rash and […]

Read: The Sudocrem Kid »

Many thanks to the RNIB WAC blog for this spot…
This is an ad for Pepsi, it’s made by deaf members of the PepsiCo workforce (part of a group called enAble). Pepsi showed this during a commercial break at the Superbowl.

And to me, they’ve not done this because the advert is written by a disability […]

Read: Bob’s House »

I was a little alarmed to come across this photograph the other day. It’s got my son in it. Well, more specifically, it’s got my son in a big floppy hat, a deep red coat and holding something white and rather blurred.
Except rather worryingly, from the costume to the pose to the poise and facial […]

Read: The Dandy Highwayman »

I had a haircut the other day. I think I can, without so much as a shadow of a doubt say it was the worst haircutting experience of my life, indeed one of the worst experiences of my whole life and I’m only just sufficiently recovered from the trauma to begin to speak about it.
It […]

Read: The Haircut From Hell »

A relative of mine went to see a psychic. The psychic asked “who’s Jack?”. So my relative explained the connection between us, and then the psychic told her that she had the ghost of a little boy in her house, called Joe, who really liked me because I’m funny and entertaining.
Now I’m not convinced that […]

Read: A Spiritual Boost »