À bientôt Tilley Dog

Very sad to announce the death of ‘Tilley Dog’ today, 17 April 2012. She died at the grand old age of 17, as the onset of arthritis in her back legs disabled her and she began to deteriorate.

Tilley Dog – 1995 – 2012 (picture taken 2007)

In Tilley’s last two weeks she was largely immobile, requiring assistance and care. She still had a good quality of life, and was very alert and interested in everything. Only a few days ago she was barking at the delivery man. She had all the time in the world for the children, even in her last days.

My first memory of Tilley as a young dog was of her running at high speed straight towards me, aiming to buzz past me within centimetres. She wasn’t a ‘doggy’ dog. She didn’t chase balls, hold her paw out, or do any of those funny things humans like dogs to do. She was just her own free spirit, very dainty and very loving.

We will miss her deeply. Over the years, we have shared many milestones in our lives with her, not least the birth of our two children. Tilley was a great friend, a playmate and a very special animal. She may be gone, but she will not be forgotten, and I look forward to seeing her again one day.

À bientôt Tilley Dog

How to add a profanity filter to Twitterfall @twfall

Ever wanted to use a Twitterfall in a public place, using a well known event hashtag, but put off by the risk of people swearing or using rude words?

  Worst feeling ever, such a **** result! now onto thursdays game! #justkeepscoring 'Nemo quote'

I have a requirement to use a twitterfall in a sensitive environment, where the event hashtag could be well publicised. The tweets will be seen live on the wall, in front of a large group of people of all ages. Seems like a highly desired feature to me, yet @twitterfall haven't yet implemented it, despite the suggestion back in 2009.

So my attention turned to Greasemonkey, as there are several scripts for this I could use in my browser. However, my browser is Google Chrome, which doesn't fully support Greasemonkey scripts, even when used with extensions like Tampermonkey (which is supposed to support greasemonkey scripts).

The obvious next step, was to find a Chrome extension to do the job, and I recommend Simple Profanity Filter. Once installed, I just updated the default profanity list from an online dictionary of profanities (not pleasant, but had to be done), and then fire up twitterfall. Within minutes, the filter could be seen doing its job, replacing rude and unpleasant words with ***. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. I also realise no filter is ever going to do the job 100%, but at least this is a good start.

Caggie is such a mind ****. Poor spencer #madeinchelsea

If you know of a better solution, I’d love to hear it.