ImageMagick isn't exactly the most intuative set of programs, is it?

I can see they're powerful, but…

If I ask for an image to be resized, I'd expect the default to be to do it, not 'only do it if it won't make the image smaller'. That's what I'd have as the option needing an extra argument.

Especially if one resize option is specifically named to show its primary use is to make the output smaller.

I'd also choose the argument characters such that they weren't special characters in *ix shells / DOS / Windows command line and thus need to be 'escaped' every time.

In the end, I managed to do the batch resize, but only by copying someone else's recipe – by myself, using the basic documentation, I could do one, eventually, but not all of them at once.

..penis

Grrr, I'm less amused when they use one of my addresses for spamming though.

At 9pm, the lovingboth inbox started exploding with bounces and 'your spam has been blocked' messages sent to [random name] @ the .co.uk.

JA's bedtime meant it took about half an hour to notice this, and ensure that all mail to all but a few addresses at the .co.uk goes to /dev/null at the server (i.e. just throw it away).

It's happened before of course – spammers pick random existing domains to fake the 'from' field, so most people get this at some point – but never as bad as this: I got 526 bounce reports in 30 minutes. Ghod knows how many emails were sent out by the spammers.

I remember life before email spam. I wonder if JA will ever experience spam free email.

That Guardian piece about prostitution last week

It's taken a while to finish this, partly because of other stuff, but mostly because I went 'argh, what crap' so often when reading it.

One of the problems is that it's a bit like the situation with bisexuality – you can get people thinking that ALL bisexuals are closeted married men having sex with men in 'public sex environments' and others going 'bisexuals are evil women who leave lesbian relationships for men' and more who… etc etc without any of them acknowledging the real diversity. And because of various political agendas (Liz Kelly, for example, is rabidly against all sex work) there is minimal meeting of minds. Quite long, but then we have minds

Football: a modest proposal

When it restarts, only about three or four teams will stand a chance of winning the English 'Premier' league. More realistically, it'll be between two. Again.

At the other end of the table, another five teams will be fighting to avoid the financial disaster of relegation

Everyone else hopes to get into the UEFA cup and not too close to the bottom. The limit of their ambition is that they'll survive until something goes wrong and it's their turn for the drop.

And this is the 'best league in the world'??

So… abandon the idea that everyone plays everyone else twice and introduce a seeding element.

The top team from last season plays everyone away (everyone gets a visit from the champions) and plays everyone else in the top half two more times. Other top teams similarly get more high quality opposition in their matches.

At the other end, the newly promoted teams get a visit from the top team, but don't visit most of the top half. Instead, they play everyone else in the bottom half three times.

If you're the 'best' one year, you get the hardest matches next year. If you're not so good, you get easier ones.

You could also reverse the prize money, so that the bottom teams get the most (they clearly need it!)

Result: the teams at the top play each other more (what the punters want to see, plus the result is more likely to be decided by such matches, not who scrapes a 1-0 win against a bottom club and who only draws with them) ditto more 'six pointers' for the teams at the bottom.

It works for the NFL – the result of each season is genuinely in doubt each year, rather than being a succession of two horse races – so why not here?

A sense of humour is a dangerous thing

Ironically, within an hour of telling me that I was not going to be appointed to either of the new jobs I wanted, thus ensuring that I will no longer be working here, the person who chaired the interview panel referred to me as 'indispensable' when talking to someone today.

'What a funny way of showing it,' I thought when I heard about this…

"Back off Warchild, seriously!"

Ah, yes, I didn't mention the Fuzztival earlier, did I?

It was at the Prince Charles Cinema a couple of weekends ago, a (free) day of films that inspired Hot Fuzz (Hard Boiled, The Last Boy Scout and "the most homoerotic film ever", Point Break) plus a live commentary from the director and cast on the film itself.

Director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are fans at heart and clearly love the ones they lovingly reference ("rip off") and they attracted very full house of an audience like them.

This, dear film distribution companies, is how to promote your film's DVD release properly. Renting the cinema and the films would have cost a few thousand. I bet they made that back in extra DVD sales the next day. I certainly went in thinking I didn't need to buy it, but…