Boom bang-a-bang

Just back from the end of festival fireworks. Hal sold me two tickets that his in-laws didn't want, so Ellie and I took a picnic blanket down and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was an All-American programme, starting with Bernstein's Overture from Candide (a piece I've loved since I was about 17) and ending with Sousa's Liberty Bell (better known as the music to Monty Pythong's Flying Circus) with a lovely lull in the middle for Barber's Adagio for Strings. The fireworks were also fantastic, and it was well worth the tenner each.

Afterwards we met up with Lilian and went for a quick drink - she's leaving for Southampton in a few days so I'm trying to fit in the odd moment here and there. Including Badminton on Tuesday followed by the Auld Hoose Pub Quiz by the looks of things.

And now home, where cats implored me for food and my bed is covered in open boxes, after Ed raised them for Wii games before heading to Blairgowrie for a week in a castle. I'm rather looking forward to joining him (and various others) on Thursday...

Fun Fact time

The American National Debt is currently 9 trillion dollars.

Over 50% of this was incurred under a Bush presidency.

Throw in Reagan and you hit 70%.

Good Lord.

Source here.

Unfinished functionality is just pointless

A while back LJ brought in a new notifications system. You can choose to be notified about other people posting things, whenever comments are made on particular posts, on particular threads, or for a variety of other actions. These notifications can either be sent to your email or sit in the Message Center on LJ.

Which would be great - except that the two major things that notifications would be useful for are people commenting on your posts (so that you can see the results in your inbox, without it going to your email) and the same for people replying to your comments. And _neither_ of those works properly. They haven't extended notifications to comment replies yet - they're still working through whatever old system LJ had before notifications turned up. And because of this you can't uncheck the box saying "Receive email notifications when others comment" without those notifications stopping. Which means that I get comments on my posts arriving via email as well, even if I tell the subscription page that I don't want this!

Huzzah for taking what could have been really useful functionality and shooting it repeatedly in the foot by not actually finishing it off.