Today I learned how the RAC break into Skodas (ones without double locking central locking anyway). Though a serise of quite understandable steps Ruth put her keys in the boot of the car to do something before church and then shut the boot … while the car was locked.

Not a problem, Chris gave me a lift back home, so I could pick up my keys… halfway there…

“of course there could be one flaw in this otherwise perfect plan…. my keys might be in my coat, which is in the boot”?

Back to the car, and it’s surprising how few people we know who can break into cars (and how many think we should throw bricks at the problem).

Quick break in the story to recount a conversation we had in the car last night…

Ruth: “We really must renew the RAC membership”?

Back to car park…

Membership renewed still on phone to RAC…

RAC: “is there anything else I can help you with”?

Ruth: “Am I covered now?”

RAC: “yes”

Ruth: “Can you put me through to recovery? I’ve locked the keys in the car”?

RAC man turns up, with his selection on coat hangers. the technique involved wedging the top of the door, and hooking the handle on the inside, to open the car.This doesn’t work on cars with a) central locking that stops you smashing a window to open the car… and B) cars with very recessed door handles.

Thankfully our car has neither of these. door open, and it can be pulled back into shape with your knee.

All in all we where quite lucky! car has no damage!

I bet your thinking, “He’s gone all quite, the mega blogging fad is over”, well sorry, I don’t think it is… It’s just been a hard few weeks, with the entire family being ill, me having to go to work half asleep and this weekend .. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder.

On Saturday morning I awoke with quite a stiff left shoulder. It’s the type of thing that happens when i lie funny, and given the amazing moving slats on our bed that can happen quite a lot; so i got up and started my day and it was still sore, we drove out to Haigh Hall and it was even sorer, we had some lunch did a walk, had a cup of tea and went the shop, and it was still sore.

We came home and I collapsed on the couch with a very very sore shoulder, so ibuprofen and hot water bottles have been the order of the day It’s now Sunday 8:45 and it’s almost better.

very soon (I hope) we will all be better at the same time.

Since moving offices at work, we’ve had a number of improvements in our lives. It’s quiter, so we can get stuff done, we are separated out so we can shout if we want to. We have more space to work and don’t feel as much like cattle as we use to, and we are closer to the Mocha Lounge which is a quite very nice coffee shop on Sir Thomas Street in Liverpool.

Coupled with the fact that we’ve got quite a few two for one vouchers, the coffee being nice, and the venue been cool to, I’ve had quite a lot of meetings in Mocha, and I suspect that almost all of the Performance Reviews are going to be in there too.

However I’m still coming down from the last visit, today I did a PRD* and we got two lattes for the price of one (?2.05) and then they offered us free coffee. so we got four coffees for ?2.05, but gosh was I buzzing for the rest of the day.

If you are in Liverpool for anything you should go, it’s not in the middle of town, but it’s well worth the walk.

*Performance Review thing. you know that touchy feely management stuff my life is now ?

One thing you notice when you work in the public sector, is the love of league tables. If something can be measured then it is (sometime if it can’t we still try). and if you have a measure for something then you can put them all together in a league table.

Being web doesn’t excuse you from this league table obsession, in-fact it’s all automated. thanks to sitemorse – A company who have realised that measuring things is one thing. put them in a league table and you’ve got the public sector hooked, it doesn’t really matter how or what you measure.

Sitemorse measure the accessibility, function, code, performance and something else* of a website, every month they do this for all local goverment websites and make a league table. Liverpool.gov.uk was first once, and then it wasn’t nothing changed but the scores did. Over the last few months it’s been quite low [for us]. Mainly because Sitemorse a company who measure websites, decided that the way MessageLabs a company who handle email didn’t do it they way they thought they should- this ment our website had poor performance.

We talked to Sitemorse, and we talked to MessageLabs and came to the conclusion that changing the email system for a league table is silly – so we didn’t.

This month liverpool.gov.uk is 32nd. We haven’t changed anything. infact according to sitemorse it’s worse than last month, but we’ve gone up. It’s all very odd and it might sound like sour-grapes; but we (the webteam) don’t care any more about this league table.

We care about the quality of the site. but not about how it performed for a few hours one day at some point in the month (you get marked down if sites you link to are down during the test… a bit hard to control).

Of course a lot of this highlights the silliness of league tables and the supposed choice they offer people, but if you live in Liverpool, what use is it for you to go to South Bedfordshire website to find out about your leisure centres?

“so that’s why Liverpool got slated by the audit commission“

Sitemorse have recently started branching out and now do league tables for banks, and news sites. I wish them luck, but who is going to change there bank because the website isn’t top of a league table?

*none of this mesures how easy it is to find or do things on the site.