Category: RULES

Avatar Security message

Due to recent security breaches affecting The Beans, a number of extremely important changes have taken place which you need to be aware of. Please read this briefing in full, and if you are uncertain about anything you see here, then please don’t hesitate to read it again but more slowly so you understand it better.

In order to help The Beans respond to this security incident, and all future security incidents, as quickly and efficiently as possible, a new Elite Security Response Taskforce Committee has been formed. Its members – Kev, Chris and Ian – have been chosen for their expertise on cybersecurity matters, their proven 24/7 availability, and the fact that they are the only people involved in The Beans. All security problems are presented to the Elite Security Response Taskforce Committee, who will then respond with a plan of action within eight to ten working weeks.

Already changes are evident. A new method of logging in to The Beans has been established and is now in service.

  1. Members should navigate to the new super secure login page at security.keep-out.pouringbeans.com/go-away/no-hackers-allowed.html from where they can enter their login details.
  2. Members should then enter their username and their password when prompted.
  3. Passwords must contain three uppercase letters; four lowercase letters; a number of numbers between none and twelve, though the numbers themselves must be no lower than eight and no higher than fourteen; three symbols; one emoji (but not the clown face); and a special noise. Users should make the noise into their device’s internal microphone at the appropriate point while typing in their password.
  4. On entering the correct username and password, the member will then receive a telephone call from an unlisted number in Cuba, and will be given a unique sequence of six digits, masked by the sound of heavy breathing and occasional bouts of coughing.
  5. The six digits must be split into two groups of three and then multiplied together. The member’s year of birth should then be deducted from that total to produce a one-time code. This should then be sent by text message to a number that will be shown on the screen.
  6. If the code is correct, an email will be sent to the member containing a unique link. Following the link will open what appears to be the Wilko’s homepage, but clicking on the picture advertising a special offer on broom handles will open a new webpage that will require use of your device’s camera.
  7. Facial recognition software will then scan the member’s viso/volto and compare it to images of the member in the photos section of The Beans.
  8. If the v/v is considered acceptable, the member will be granted access to The Beans and will have three minutes to write a new post or otherwise carry out activities in the admin interface before being automatically logged out.

The danger presented to The Beans by hackers, cybercriminals, cyberbullies and incompetence remains extremely high. The Pouring Beans Elite Security Response Taskforce Committee thanks you for your understanding as we continue to work for a more secure future, today and tomorrow, for our children, and our children’s children. Although at this stage neither our children nor our children’s children will be allowed to access the website for security reasons. Thank you.

Avatar Words of advice

William Cobbett knows more than you do. It’s a fact and there’s no getting round it. Lucky for you, though, he has written down what he knows so that you can benefit from it. He wrote it down in 1829 but I don’t see why that makes it any less relevant.

You’re still young, aren’t you? Good. Let’s see what advice he has for young men. I have divided the advice into five logical categories to keep things simple. Simply direct your attention to the heading that most closely relates to the area in which you need advice.

Trammels

In all situations of life, avoid the trammels of the law. Man’s nature must be changed before law-suits will cease… One good rule is to have as little as possible to do with any man who is fond of law-suits, and who, upon every slight occasion, talks of an appeal to the law. Such persons… are, therefore, companions peculiarly disgusting to men of sense.

Abatements

Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called hard dealing. They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of two prices for the same article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest shopkeeper is to insult him.

Sotting

There is such a thing as your quiet ‘pipe-and-pot-companions,’ which are, perhaps, the most fatal of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting, over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things.

Divers

By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what England was in former times. Divers books teach how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.

Pimps

I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations; and, they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be called literary pimps: they ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration.

Avatar No mangoes in the server room

You will remember, of course, that this was some excellent advice from Kev, who is an IT magician and retailer of high-quality wireless abbabs.

I have, therefore, put up signs enforcing this rule at work.

I was just going to take pictures of my new signage and then take it down, but when I actually put it up, I decided I liked it, so it’s now going to stay there permanently. It’s a good rule. Safety first.

Avatar New beans, please

“One! Ha ha ha. Two! Ha ha ha. Three! Ha ha ha.” The immortal wisdom of the Count.

Here on the Beans, our counting is not done by a furry purple vampire, but by the Bean Counter, an ingenious piece of machinery made from old sofa springs and a second-hand nuclear reactor that we found in a car boot sale. For more than four years now it’s been faithfully counting up our posts and generating new genetically-modified beans and peas as a reward for our performance, while also disgorging between eight and twelve tons of a resinous toxic by-product into the picturesque River Swale each day.

The highly complicated algorithm by which it awards beans has remained the same since early 2014, so it’s no surprise that earlier this year there were calls for an overhaul of the system to better reflect the realities of blogging in the futuristic world of 2018.

The point of the Bean Counter was never to create a level playing field, but rather to produce a playing field with carefully chosen hills and crevices so that we all stand a chance of scoring a Bean each month according to our various blog posting habits. Critics of the existing system pointed out that it was far easier for Ian to score a Bean than anyone else, and that Kev’s time-consuming building projects meant that three posts in a month was an unattainably high bar for him to reach.

I am delighted to announce, as a result, that major engineering works have been completed and the Bean Counter is now operating a completely new set of rules.

  • Kev will now score a Bean if he makes two (2) posts in a month.
  • Ian will now score a Bean if he makes precisely three (3) or four (4) posts in a month.
  • Chris will continue to score a Bean if he makes four (4) or more posts in a month.

Some would say that these new rules should begin operation from this month onwards, and that existing scores should be left alone. Perhaps they should. But I had a go at that and it was really difficult, so the new rules now apply to all previous months as well, causing a major recasting of our historical Bean Counts.

  • Kev has gained six (6) additional beans for months in which he made two posts.
  • Ian has lost ten (10) beans for months in which he only made two posts.

This is deeply and inherently unfair, which is unfortunate but unavoidable without further major re-engineering work that will just be an absolute faff.

Your comments, detailed feedback and outright anger will be welcome in the comments section below, but may not amount to much.

Avatar What Kevin does

So, what have we learned this week? Or it may be longer than a week. We have learned that Kevin never finished school and must be unemployed. How does he afford such a lavish lifestyle? How can he pay for an extravagant house, life and all those inhaler cups? Where does the money come from?

Thankfully, with the help of our army of scientists, we have managed to work out the answers to these questions. I was going to invent an invention (and it would have been a GOOD invention) however this was not required.

In order for Kevin to keep up appearances he follows this very strict, very organised regime:

8:00am – has breakfast, takes a couple of handy puffs from his inhaler cup, says goodbye to his wife and puts the Changlet in his car.

8:20am – drops the Changlet at nursery, where he can learn about cows, bees and other helpful things.

8:55am – waits until Sarah has left for work then sneaks back into his mansion.

9:10am – takes out his massive sack of rocks, found on the beach, and starts drawing faces on them.

10:10am – stops for a tea break to refill his levels. Drawing hilarious faces really takes it out of you.

11:00am – adds googly eyes and pipe cleaners for limbs to his Kev Rocks. Stops for a moment to take in just how much he has achieved in a few hours.

11:15am – unwraps huge hidden quantities of milk, eggs, plain flour, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, baking powder and vanilla extract.

11:30am – bakes the world’s largest waffle in his humongous back garden.

12:00pm – loads his Kev Rocks into his boot and straps the waffle to the top of his car.

12:30pm – drives to the Corn Exchange to set up shop.

1:00pm – sells chunks of his gigantic waffle to hapless tourists for five quid per bite. If you’re looking for a Kev Rock it’s upwards of eight pounds depending on the size of rock.

4:00pm – gathers all his money up and laughs manically.

4:05pm – throws the last of the waffle at dirty pigeons or, providing there’s enough, sells it to a homeless person as a tasty, makeshift mattress.

5:00pm – picks the Changlet up from nursery, dusting the shards of waffle off his hands.

5:30pm – drives home as though he’s been at a real job all day. Puts the child down and he’s straight back to the inhaler cup.

There’s not a lot to say after reading all that other than, well, maybe I should chuck my job in and do the same thing? Maybe I could take it a step further and build houses out of waffles.

Waffle house.

That is all.

Avatar How to name a company

You will probably remember that, some years ago now, Ian and myself decided that the best way to name a company was to use the name of the person followed by the thing their company did. That way, everyone knew where they stood and there could be no uncertainty. “Peter’s Window Cleaning” is a good company name. “Lucy’s Cafe” is another.

You can see the problem of badly named companies everywhere. “Boots”, for example, is a bad company name because it’s actually a chemist and doesn’t sell any kind of footwear. Having been founded by a man called John Boot, its name should obviously be “John’s Medicines”.

I bring this up because I would like to share with you the worst company name in the world. It’s a hair salon I pass every day on the way to the station. It’s called “www.comb”.

I find it hard to understand how anyone thought this was a good idea. “www.comb” sounds stupid when you try to say it out loud. It’s not actually the web address for the company (that’s www.comb.org.uk, itself pretty misguided because “.org.uk” is meant for non-profit organisations, but whatever). The name is, however, specifically designed to look like a web address, so for some reason the company has deliberately been given a name that is formatted as a web address but which isn’t the web address of the company. The only way you can use the company’s services is by physically going into a shop, and there is no sense in which this is an online company, so having the abbreviation for “world wide web” in its name is meaningless. And of course if you go into a hair salon, you would hope that using a comb is not the pinnacle of their skills. You’d hope they’re good at scissors, and hairdryers, and styling tongs, and that sort of thing. Being good at combs shouldn’t be their big sell.

Let’s be clear: the name of this business should probably be “Helen and Lisa’s Hair Salon”. Choosing a different name would be sub-optimal but acceptable. Choosing the name “www.comb”, though,  is madness and must be stopped.

Avatar What is a Pound Minute?

We may have invented wireless communications, put sailors on the moon and shortened the English language to within an inch of its life, but what is a Pound Minute?

The Pound Minute is a way of working out whether doing something is actually worth your while. It measures the cost received for the action being carried out and confirms whether you should or should not do it. The Pound Minute has been alive for several decades but is only now receiving the attention it so rightly deserves.

Say, for instance, you were asked to paint your friend’s fence. They provide you with the paint and overalls, and maybe even lunch if you play your cards right. The fence will take approximately three hours to paint, both front and back, and you have to apply at least two coats of paint for it to be considered a worthwhile job. Your friend will pay you £10.00 per hour of painting that you do.

If you choose to carry out the smallest amount of the painting required, which is six hours, you will earn £60.00. This equates to six Pound Minutes. This is a good use of your time but will make your friend think twice about asking for your services again.

If you choose to carry out the right amount of painting required, which is nine hours, you will earn £90.00. This equates to nine Pound Minutes. This is a bad use of your time, but it will make your friend think of you in a new light because you are going the extra mile to ensure that fence is gleaming like grandma’s keys.

Those of an indecisive nature can also utilise the ‘Wheel of Thrusting (TM)’. Future versions may be able to calculate Pound Minutes on your behalf.