This is going to be a summer of music for me. Just weeks after successfully booking tickets to see Prince in London (they sold out after 30 minutes), we also came up in the lottery to see Live Earth at Wembley. It’s a good cause and I’m really excited about seeing the show.
Just a few more weeks. . .
There’s a story in the news today about the growing problem of imposters sitting practical driving tests. Apparently, it’s possible to hire a look-alike to sit the test for you for just £500.
You can read the article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6231892.stm
When I came to England, I found the driving test very difficult to pass. I ended up taking it seven times over two years (and I had been driving for over ten years in the States). Each time I failed, the examiner would tell me how very close I was, “but sorry, you didn’t pass.” When I did pass the test, I got a license that doesn’t expire until I’m 70. No more tests. Even if we have flying cars in the year 2042, I won’t mind because my license will still be valid. Even in the States, you have to renew with a written exam every five years or so, but not here.
Now that I spend a lot of time riding around on a motorcycle, I see how drivers rarely look when they change lanes or signal when they enter roundabouts. They’ve established bad habits since they earned their license 20 or 30 or 50 years ago. It’s dangerous.
But, when road accident levels get too high, everyone jumps to the same conclusionâour tests are not difficult enough. They increase the difficulty. When I took the test in my late twenties, everyone said to me “I passed when I was 17, but it wasn’t so difficult then. I could never pass today.” Between the time I took my theory test for cars 6 years ago and the time I took the theory test for motorcycles two months ago, the DSA had attached an additional requirementâThe Hazard Safety test. If you have a license already, you don’t have to take this test.
The roads are getting too dangerous so we take it out on 17 year-old kids who’ve never driven before by making sure they take their driving test over and over again. A 65 year-old man who took his test in the early 60’s if far more dangerous, I think. He’s the guy I worry about when riding my motorcycle.
No wonder people hire imposters to take their tests. I wish I knew about this scheme a few years ago.
I finally switched to Firefox as my default browser this week. Despite the hype in the past, with Firefox 1.x I found too many sites which just didn’t render properly (due to web developers who didn’t code to standards). I also always work in corporate IE-only environments, so I always code and run with IE and do last-minute Firefox checks only if the project warrants it. The only reason I could see to use Firefox in the past was that it didn’t support Microsoft, but I found the quality of the browser lacking.
But this week I was building an ASP.net 2 app for a client and started to check things out in Firefox. I found everything rendered nearly identically. This way, I already had peace of mind about the code I was producing as I was building it (if it looked good in Mozilla, it will look in IE).
Firefox 2 seems to be a huge improvement over 1.x. I was really impressed.
I really started to appreciate Firefox when I started looking at the add-ons. There are hundreds of add-ons and themes written by the community that allow you to customise your browser exactly how you like it. A lot of the functionality is only coming into Windows with Vista and the sidebar, but it is still clunky. I like the add-ons best.
Here are some of the add-ons I’ve installed:
Anyway, I haven’t given up on Microsoft in any way. I still prefer Windows Media Player to iTunes (except where I need my iPod or for lookup up podcasts). But in browser terms, I’m going to give Firefox a go for a while.
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