Dodgy DIY photo's

[David]

Hi,

I posted recently about starting a website that collects photo's of bad diy jobs. This may include bad "professional" jobs too!

Anyway, I've had a couple of submissions, the site gets a reasonable number of visitors so I've moved the site to a proper domain. The new address is

Currently all the examples are electrical ones, but I'm sure that as there are multiple trades here, some of you will have wonderful examples to add. Now the website is properly online, people can get the idea of the sort of thing it's about.

The aim is to build up galleries of pictures, therefore I'd be grateful if anyone has any contributions. Please email them to [e-mail]

Many thanks!

David

[brugnospamsia]

Bad Gateway The following error occurred: [code=DNS_HOST_NOT_FOUND] The host name was not found during the DNS lookup. Contact your system administrator if the problem is not found by retrying the URL.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please contact the administrator.

=======================

And it's PHOTOS - no apostrophe.

[Richard Sterry]

I too cannot reach the site. For once I must defend the user of the apostrophe (I am usually on the attack) - "Photo's" is an abbreviation and the apostrophe seems to me to (quite correctly) indicate that there are missing letters. However, I can also see the sense in omitting it.

I am beginning to wonder, now that the use of apostrophes in plurals seems to be increasingly widespread, that the adoption of the apostrophe in the first place (for whatever purpose) was a very big mistake! How much simpler and calmer life would be without them...

{Awaits the storm of controversy}

Rick

[David]

Sorry - I gave the wrong address. It's

[stejonda]

In message , David writes

What is the point of a text-only version of the site? (Especially as it is no such thing).

[Lobster]

So why call it dodgy-diy.org then?

Did you read people's replies to your original post?

Dvaid

[brugnospamsia]

Thinking about it, "photo" is a pretty meaningless contraction - just a prefix ..similar to "telly" I suppose.

No, they're fully established "self-sufficient" nouns and need no apostrophe except to imply possession - i.e "my old telly's turret tuner" ...

The problem in (with ?) ditching the apostrophe is what to do about "its" and it's"... and what would be next ? - there / they're / their ?

I'm no linguist myself, and abit over-liberal with punctuation, but at some point the language "looses" its meaning. (there's another AOL special !)

...Newspeak here we come ....

;-)

Jeremy.

[Mary Fisher]

Dvaid (if that's your real name!) are you and the others trying to discourge the lad?

Nobody's perfect.

Mary

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Because most of the rather stupid regulations we have come from so called 'pro' bodies with an axe to grind - ie to protect their incomes or whatever from the DIY alternative - when doing little to protect from the far greater problem, to most, of cowboy 'pros'.

Ie. Of course there are some clueless DIYers that might put themselves and their nearest and dearest at risk. But IMHO, they are but a tiny fraction of cowboys who do this - and worse - in the name of a fast buck.

[Lobster]

Yup...

David

[Andrew May]

Can you be sure any of this is DIY? To take just two examples:

Roofing Gallery 1 – “Not bad for a £7000 re roof job!” If they were charged £7000 for it then it was presumably a professional. In any case I can’t imagine any DIYer who would contemplate a complete re-roofing job without doing it properly. I am sure that there are many pros who would if it’s a quick buck.

Gas Gallery 1 – “It was fitted by a corgi registered installer” By their own admission a professional job. Did the submitter report the Corgi engineer in question?

Perhaps renaming the site dodgy-tradespeople.net would get you a few more submissions.

The site also seems to keep crashing Opera. A quick check of the home page, which is not exactly large reveals nearly 20 violations of the html standard. Perhaps a candidate for dodgy-html.net?

[stejonda]

He's certainly read mine & changed the text accordingly. :)

[Sue]

In message , David writes

Can anyone tell me how to photograph a 3-pin socket that blows the lighting fuse when you plug a kettle into it?

[bigcat]

That woudl qualify as a Very Odd Question.

NT

[Bob Dung]

Have e-mailed the webmaster with this one i found today.. Again, not DIY but done by our fav big telecoms company.. In their defence, the cover was on, well sort of, it was balanced on this mess.. Marvel at the workmanship ::