Why is Freecycle a mailing list?

I know that setting up a mailing list is dead easy, but really - it's the ideal application for a website/database.  Having a database of items, each one of which can then be marked with a status.  People could subscribe to notifications if they wanted to know about everythng in their local area, but they could also just come to the website every so often and see the list of all untaken objects.

This seems like something that would be vastly easier to use than the current system - which I don't use because I don't want to be hit with dozens/hundreds of emails a day.

It doesn't seem like a vastly complicated thing to write - and I assume there are some competent web-coders who also like Freecycle, so I wonder why it hasn't happened...

Quote of the Day

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things; One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love."
-- Butch Hancock

(stolen from interactiveleaf)

We could do with one of these

via Warren Ellis

Day off

Woke up at 8am this morning, as I had taken the day off work.

No, wait, that can't be right, can it?

But yes, I took the day off to help Julie distribute leaflets for her research (go here if you're a student and fancy helping her out/getting fit).  We spent the day printing out leaflets and then distributing them to the thousands of milling students that were clogging up Teviot Square for the Fresher's Fayre (or whatever they're calling it this week).  This actually went fairly well - although I was a bit nervous about handing things to people.  I'm not sure what I was expecting them to do, but interaction with strangers always makes me feel nervous.  However, after the first few it was a piece of cake, and we managed to hand out about 100 leaflets to people, which was a good start.  Interestingly most of mine went to women, while most of Julie's went to men (several of whom seemed more interested in her than in the study...).

We then dropped in on MaMaison to look at some tables I liked the look of.  Sadly, not to Julie's taste - so the search continues!  Not that we can buy them quite yet - until the bedroom damp is sorted we're sleeping in the study and half the stuff that should be in the study/bedroom is taking up the space that the dining table will eventually be in.

Anyway - the damp person sent by the insurance company will be here at 4pm with any luck, and I'll get a bit further along actually sorting this problem once and for all...

Sadly, flat viewing was never like this for me

But I would have much the same reaction if told I couldn't live there...
(stolen from greybeta)

Latest on the damp

The new plumber came round and contradicted the previous plumber by telling me it probably _is_ the radiator.  Which makes four experts and three separate opinions so far.  He now goes back to the assessors, who go back to the insurance company, and hopefully they decide between them that I am covered by insurance.  But, apparently, this will take about a week, so my stress levels will remain at "elevated" for the time being.  Oh, and once it's cleared I then have a week of having plaster ripped off and dehumidifiers extract buckets of water and _then_ I get to have it put back together again.

It's pretty frustrating - the living room is full of stuff that should be in the study/bedroom, the mattress from the bed is in the middle of the study floor most of the time (except when it's propped against the wall to give us some space), and clothes are all over the place.  It rarely seems worth tidying up because the place can't get anywhere near 'tidy'.  It's been two weeks so far, and it seems likely that it's going to be at least another three before I have a flat I actually like living in.

The one saving grace is Julie, who has been incredibly supportive, helpful and lovely throughout it all.  It's not quite so bad sleeping on a mattress in the study when I'm sleeping next to her :->

Anyway - fingers crossed that it doesn't end up costing me too much money, and that a month from now we'll have a flat that we can actually have people round to visit!