Free web development tools for Mac using Safari 3.

Safari and TextWrangler

I found TextWrangler to be the best code editor I have ever used. Yet I still needed a good debugger. I searched for over a week, but found nothing. At this time I had the Safari 3 beta, I’ve used the debug menu in Safari 2, but there wasn’t much in there besides a console. Well one day I was going through macdailynews.com, and like I always do, I opened up all the articles I wanted to read first by tabbing them. I do this by command (the key on an Apple keyboard) clicking on the links. Well I accidentally control clicked one, which I do sometimes. This of course opened the contextual menu. I noticed at the bottom there was a new menu item called Inspect Element. I clicked on this with curiosity. Suddenly the Web page went semitransparent black, except where the link under the mouse was. Also a new window popped up showing the structure of the link and even the CSS code going with it. I had found my debugger. Using the inspector, you can see every document that the Web page is using at the time. The inspector can also show all the errors visually and give you the reason for it. Another great feature is the speed inspector. This allows you to see visually how fast every file was downloaded and rendered.

Pretty impressive. You'll need a bit of Terminal tweaking to make the debugger active. Even if you don't use it for web development the Safari Inspect Element function is cool.

And the answer = more money

Scotsman - 'End free universities and spend cash on educating the illiterate instead'

Students should be forced to pay fees to attend Scottish universities, with public money diverted to help eradicate illiteracy and innumeracy, one of Scotland's most influential education figures says today. Andrew Cubie, architect of the graduate endowment scheme, questions whether it is "ethically acceptable" to have free tertiary education when one Scot in five cannot read or write.

It might be an idea to try and ensure that the money that is being spent already on educating children from the age of five actually produces at the very least a minimum standard of literacy and numeracy for all. What has money got to do with it? It isn't lack of funds that causes children to spend 11 or 12 years in a full-time education system only to emerge devoid of the most basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic, it's piss-poor teaching.

Keeping up the standards

Good to see the left/liberals are maintaining a high standard of political debate on the blogosphere. Of course, I don't give a fuck about abusing politicians but then I'm not always wittering on about how awful the right is and how their cheap tabloid tactics are damaging the entire future of political blogging. Both sides heartily deserve each other as far as I'm concerned.

Dohrect debits

Looking for a voice:

So why do HMRC need to keep personal banking details anyway ?

Erm, that might be so they can make child benefit payments direct to your, erm, bank account. Doh!

Arise Sir Plus

NHS on course for large surplus

A clampdown on spending within the NHS has turned a massive deficit into an even bigger surplus in just two years. As much as £1.8bn, about 2% of the budget, will be left unspent this year, the Department of Health says - prompting charges of "boom and bust". The NHS was ordered to balance the books after running up a £547m deficit in the financial year 2005/06. Ministers have said that any surplus there is will be put back into patient care next year. Over the past two years, the NHS has been under extreme financial pressure, with many trusts cutting jobs and making other savings in order to break even.

What a way to run a health service. God knows what damage has been done as NHS managers took the pruning shears to their services in order to 'balance the books'. But why this obsession with eradicating what was in effect a tiny deficit of less than half a percent? As David Stout, the director of the NHS Confederation PCT Network - representing the primary care trusts who spend NHS money - said, "the surplus was not necessarily a cause for concern. In the context of the overall NHS budget this is not a huge surplus." If that applies to a £1.6 billion surplus it must apply even more strongly to a deficit less than one third that figure. Even now the books aren't 'balanced', with some trusts in deficit and others in surplus. How simply totting these pluses and minuses up to try and arrive at zero overall signifies good financial planning is beyond me.

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "It is excellent news that the NHS continues to be in healthy surplus. "This means more flexibility for health services and better care for patients." Quite how this works he didn't explain.

John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund, said that a surplus of that size was not necessarily a healthy sign, as the money could have been spent on services. He said: "If the NHS does end up with a significant underspend at the end of the financial year, that will be a real loss to patients".

Well, you don't need a degree in economics to work that one out, do you?

Meanwhile back in the real world:

Paramedics were forced to treat patients in the back of the vehicles as they waited near the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital...Norfolk's two other general hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston were also on the top level of alert - meaning all contingency measures were exhausted. And a spokesman for Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge said it had also faced similar problems - which is termed "black alert".

Brown nose out of joint

Brown loses it in The Mail | spiked

The UK government is in crisis, accused of betraying, endangering and ripping off the public. Just like old times again, ain’t it?  But this time the beleaguered New Labour government has done something more than misplacing the personal and banking details of 15m UK families on two discs. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost the CD-thin support of the media and the public that cheered him into Downing Street a few months ago amid optimistic talk of new beginnings and dramatic change, even a ‘revolution’.

His share price has collapsed almost as dramatically as that of Northern Rock, the troubled mortgage lender. Brown has gone from boom to bust in a matter of weeks. Now there is talk of Brown sinking into dark moods, bullying everybody, barricading himself within his inner circle, while younger guns like Ed Balls and David Miliband already begin jostling for position to succeed him as leader.

There have even been the first signs of a Blair-lash, as some serious observers start to appear almost nostalgic for the days of Tony. One anonymous Brownite cabinet minister has reportedly been wondering aloud whether Labour isn’t starting to look like the Tories in the doomed last days of John Major’s government, veering from one crisis to another.

No stink bombs please

Control order prevents suspected terrorist from studying school science

A suspected terrorist who is subject to a control order is being prevented from studying for high school courses in chemistry and human biology. This is thought to be the first case in the UK of restrictions on academic study being included in a control order.

Control orders are legal instruments to restrict the activities and liberty of individuals for the purpose of "protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism". In this case an Iraqi national known only as A.E. is subject to a list of restrictions 15 pages long including a 16-hour curfew, limits on where he can work, who he can meet and where he can go. Nationally, 14 people are currently subject to control orders.

A.E.'s order initially lasted for 12 months but was renewed for another year during a secret hearing he was not entitled to attend. He was represented at the hearing by a barrister appointed as his "special advocate", although he was not allowed to meet or discuss the case with this person

But you didn't finish the job...

US Military Asks Wounded Soldiers To Return Portions Of Signing Bonuses

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments. To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases. Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills. He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started. Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye. A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

Campaign Fun(ds)

The Crowd Finally Gets It: They Can Group Up And Manipulate AdSense

I love this:

Since the beginnings of AdSense, I wondered how much time will have to pass until people start abusing the system en masse; be it for fun, or profit. Today at Reddit we have proof of such behavior. Redditers are calling everyone to click on Rudy Giuliani’s paid ads simply because they cost him money. Think about it: a mass of people which is Reddit or Digg can actually create quite an AdWords bill for poor Rudy if they all start clicking like madmen; at the very least, Google will have problems evaluating the campaign and determining the “false” from the “real” clicks.

Strictly speaking he could put a daily limit on his adwords but I expect it will be fairly hefty in any case.

Mind your own business

EU 'sexual history' quiz denied

The EU has denied claims it plans to question women about their sexual history as part of a drive to improve census statistics...The European Commission says it needs better quality data on how people live in order to improve policy making.The Commission has come up with an extensive list of questions it wants all member states to ask in their next census to improve data on housing and population. In addition to data on nationality, size of family, ethnicity, it also wants to find out about computer literacy, number of cars owned, cooking facilities and "durable consumer goods possessed by the household".

One proposed question asks the "date(s) of the beginning of consensual union(s) of women having ever been in a consensual union: (ii) first consensual union and (ii) current consensual union".

There is one very simple way of dealing with this crap - LIE!

Answer the 'consensual union' question thus: 'August 14th 1842'.
 
As for the others: 'I have 17 refrigerators, 9 cars, 62 TVs, 1 radio, 48 microwaves, 10 computers, no washing machine, 81 DVD players  and a partridge in a pear tree', so FUCK OFF!

This Way Down

The Sun Says

I think it was TNT and not Royal Mail but still this sums it all up (especially after darling's hopeless performance on the Today programme.

Pissing down our backs

Empire Burlesque  - Storm Warnings of More Tyranny to Come

Chris Floyd on the recent speeches by Brown and Bush:

Both speeches give eloquent testimony to the fundamental fraudulency at the heart of the Anglo-American Terror State apparatus, and to the curdled cynicism of its leaders. They prate of their devotion to liberty while they act relentlessly and ruthlessly to take it away. They demean and despise the people they are ostensibly "protecting," treating us as cowards and fools who would sell our birthrights for a mess of pottage, as long as it's served to us behind a barbed wire fence, with an armed guard outside to keep the scary darkies away. To resort to a more earthy vernacular, they piss down our backs and tell us it's raining. And they will keep on doing it for as long as we let them.