August 2002 Archives

It arrived! :)

Oh yeah, if you're viewing this via Syndic8.com or AmphetaDesk then the article link should point to the actual article, not the first link in the article. And if you're viewing this in an old browser, you'll see a # symbol at the start of every item, just to remind you to upgrade. Oh come on, do you really think Netscape 4.x is a good browser? It sucks! Get Mozilla or Netscape 7.0 (when it's released) - you won't regret it, believe me.

And a belated thanks to everyone who's been signing my guestbook, I really appreciate it :).

Hmmm... Blogger and Mozilla don't seem to like each other. While I've always had problems with the general interface in Mozilla, this latest problem has caused the loss of a few template items, rendering the RSS Feed and Back To Top link at the bottom useless.

Anyway, it's fixed now, and I've added extra 'Back to Top' links for each post item. But how it happened remains a mistery.

Bradford have offered me some accommodation, and ironically it's in the same block that my dad stayed in when he was an undergraduate (Revis Barber Hall). What comes around comes around, I guess.

What I'm slightly annoyed about is that the restrictions on internet access in the rooms - it is supposedly only for academic use. The items listed as being disallowed didn't include weblogging or general surfing (just chat and high bandwidth activities), though I'll need to take a look at the full list first. And ironically, to be able to access the list on the intranet site I need to have a user name and password from the university, which I won't get until I sign up with the scheme. Oh the irony.

The phone charges also seem a little steep - you can read them here as they are publicly available. Specifically 8p a minute for calling home is a bit harsh - hopefully my rhubarb card will sort that out though.

Not done much at home today, other than tidy up and do some ironing (that great masculine activity...). Next door are having their new fence extended, so we now have a shiny new (and reasonably stable) fence down one side of the garden. Now if only our other neighbours would get new fences too ;).

Tonight is Ventures - we haven't planned anything specific though.

On the net, I've been reading Steve Bass' Windows Kvetch article, which was written with some inspiration from us Xteqqers. It's quite lengthy, but worth a read as it covers various Windows annoyances and how to get rid of them.

See ya tomorrow :)

Good news - BT lost the hypertext patent case. This idiotic claim by BT was an attempt at charging companies for using hyperlinks, which BT claims it patented. Apparently, it... um... didn't. And a good thing too - if you owned a company, you'd have to pay royalties for every link you made. As if BT were ever going to get people to pay...

By the way, that link was found courtesy of AbsoBlogginLutely!, which links to me via BlogRolling and is also one of my siblings on BlogTree - it seems we both saught inspiration from Chris Pirillo :).

Yesterday I went with my parents to Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster - it's a country house with some nice gardens, but is interesting because the house is still being restored (some rooms haven't been touched, others have large cracks in the ceiling and damp...). Quite a good place to visit. However, English Heritage's web site does not render at all well in Mozilla so be warned.

We then went onto the nearby Meadowhall where I picked up Stopping Spam from the O'Reilly series. It's a very good book - it describes the tactics used, how email and usenet work, a history of spam and all sorts. And it only cost 99p :).

Today's been another boring day, mostly spent updating to Mozilla 1.1! Yes, it's out, and yes, it rocks. It seems faster than the previous builds too, which is always good.

And Ciaran's blog now has a new final resting place - you can find a link to it in the sidebar. He's now configured his script to ping Weblogs.com so it should show as updated when he's written something. Dontcha just look BlogRolling? ;)

Just had an email:

Hello.
Spotted your blog on blogornot (noted you are from York). Hello from a Harrogate blogger !

Matt
www.dragondrop.org

It's a small world, isn't it? :)

Friday - Bradford sent me the welcome pack, with a huge pile of leaflets and brochures that I need to read and digest before I go. I also filled out a form to update my status with reference to my student loan - I doubt there'll be any chanes in the amount of money I'm entitled to, but at least they know where to send the cheque :)

My auntie and uncle also came over - they're based down in Norfolk but are doing a 'northern tour', visiting friends and relatives, and wanted to stop over for a night and see how we were doing. The weather was awful, so we wound up going to the designer outlet after lunch, and spent the evening watching Dad's slides from when we went to France a few weeks ago.

Saturday - they moved on across the pennines, so we went out to the twice-monthly farmers' market at Murton (note to self: must ask if they want a website...) and then went into town to do some shopping. Since I'd hardly been near a computer for the past 24 hours, I spent the rest of yesterday catching up with what I'd missed in terms of emails and ODP stuff.

Sunday - another quiet day, mostly spent editing. Now you can see why I haven't updated much :)...

You may, however, been interested to know that Trillian is vunerable to security attacks. This was reported earlier in the month, but as yet there has been nothing done about it. Hmmm...

Mind you, today I downloaded no less than 4 security updates from Windows Update.

Is it GODZILLA?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oops... forgot to post yesterday... again. Not much to report, other than that I got confirmation of my student loan (which should mean it gets to me in good time).

And I've got another petition for you to sign...

This one is campaigning against software patents in Europe. There's currently 122793 signatures, but even a few more will help. Full details of the campaign and why it is needed are on the site.

So, Opera 7 is on the horizon. Actually, it looks quite good - there's better support for W3C's DOM, and speed has been greatly enhanced by re-writing much of the rendering engine. My hat is off.

But one quote from the article did annoy me:

"What these other browser makers should do is stop complaining about what Microsoft is doing and start supporting what Microsoft is supporting," Hurd said. "People out there aren't reading these specs; they're using IE."

. Um, yeah...

People complain about IE being slow, and there's a good reason for it. It uses all manner of extra code so that all pages, no matter how sloppily they are written, will display. Take a look at http://www.geocities.com/kaweka_2000/aboutus.html. In IE, it looks like any normal web page. But throw it into a standards-compliant browser like Mozilla and the text gets larger and larger until a single letter fills the page. Badly nested heading tags are to blame here, but you get the idea. [Actually, in this case Opera 5.0 displays the page fine, according to a fellow ODP editor].

Remove this extra code, and you have a compact browser that runs like an olympic athlete on speed. In fact, embedded browsers, like those on PDAs, mobile phones and TV set-top boxes, work in a similar way, due to the reduced memory that these devices have. If it weren't for sloppy coders, web browsing would be a much faster experience.

So am I blaming IE? Yes and no. The blame partly lies in those producing sloppy code, but I'm also blaming Microsoft for allowing so-called site designers to get away with it. If IE was more strict, then I imagine that the web would be a much more efficient place.

Let's just hope that, with Netscape 7.0 Final just around the corner and AOL looking set to use Gecko in its software (this is already the case in AOL for Mac), the number of non-IE users will increase. Now that'll be a right royal arse kicking for those responsible of sloppyness.

Another mild design update - I have started using <acronym> tags here and there (mostly in the templated areas). Apparently it makes the page more accessable to users with restricted eyesight (I'm assuming better compatibility with screen readers). It means that Mozilla users will get a dotted line under acronyms, and will be able to get the full definition by holding the mouse over it.

Not done too much today, mainly clearing up the mess on the floor in the room I'm in at the moment (mostly CDs that I've ripped or that are awaiting ripping) and more ironing. I have also ripped and re-ripped a few more CDs; the Ogg Vorbis format continues to amaze me in terms of quality - one of the songs I did today at 128Kbps sounds just like the original. Admittedly the song wasn't complex (unlike some of the songs I listen to) so it didn't need a high bitrate, but it's nice to know that I've saved some disk space (the song was originally an MP3 at 160Kbps).

Just in case you don't know (and you should by now ;) I'm using dBpowerAMP Music Converter Release 9a with the Ogg Vorbis Release 8 codec add-on, supporting the Ogg Vorbis 1.0 standard. MP3 copying is handled by the Lame 3.92 encoder using --alt-preset CBR 160 (which is the most efficient way of creating a 160Kbps MP3 file). My Ogg Vorbis files are either 128Kbps or 160Kbps, depending on how much I like the song.

Tonight I'm going climbing with Ventures, and since I'll be leaving soon, I'd better get my arse down to Tesco to buy a pizza. Toodles!

You know, writing the "Will you ever get bored of blogging?" question on the Blog Info page was probably a bad idea, since I've been a little bored of it. Hopefully it's a passing phase.

So what's happened? Well, things. Yesterday I changed my email address. I'm now using MyRealBox.com as an email account - it's a free service provided by Novell (of all people), mainly to serve as a test bed for the commercial packages. Despite not having guaranteed uptime, it looks like quite a good deal - as well as a webmail interface, you get POP3 and IMAP support.

I'm also moving away from using Outlook Express as my email client, and instead giving Mozilla Mail a try (which is now upgraded to version 1.0.1 RC1 - a few minor but useful modifications). I'm actually very pleased with it - it's faster than OE and the interface is nice.

Today I had to ring up Bradford University - I still hadn't received anything from them about my place so I thought I'd better check. Turns out that the message hadn't come through properly from UCAS - one computer said I had confirmed the place, the other hadn't. They're now in sync, so I should be receiving the registration documents in due course. I've sent in the accommodation form today.

I also got a cheque for £25 from my grandparents for making it to university (you'd think they had better things to spend their pensions on, but I admire their generosity), which I went to cash into my Halifax account. Which was interesting since I've never cashed anything into a bank account before. Fortunately the woman at the Halifax branch was understanding, and it didn't take all that long in the end. I added another £25 out of my own wallet (I seem to have lost the ability to spend money recently...), so I now have the magical £100 in my account which entitles me to a debit card. Hopefully that'll arrive soon.

I've done a little more design tinkering this evening, which means that:

1. Mozilla users will now see full width section headers on the sidebar (as intended).
2. The style sheet validates with no errors or warnings!
3. The non-blog pages now validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict :D
4. The pages now have links to ICRA, who I am keen to support.
5. There are links to the CSS validator, and links to the HTML validator on the non-blog pages

In fact, the new page I put up last night validated straight off - I didn't need to modify it at all :)

I've uploaded a page about this blog and the reasoning behind it - check out the new 'Weblog Info' link on the sidebar. Bare in mind that I was rather tired when I wrote it ;)

By the way, Ciaran finally updated his blog - see http://mystationwagon.com/~ciaran/journal.cgi. Note that this is a temporary URL - the Nobody Wrecked My Station Wagon URL will be back shortly, I expect. Except this time it'll be on port 80 instead of 20000...

Today we went to Newcastle. We were intending to go to Scarborough, but it was rather foggy this morning, and since the weather forecast reckoned the fog would linger on the coast, we decided to go elsewhere.

Despite making two visits to Newcastle in the space of a week back in January (see this and this), I haven't been up since, and have never been down onto Quayside - the "happening" area of the city. The transformation this area has seen in the past 5 years is amazing. What used to be a huge selection of rundown warehouses is now one of Britian's classiest places to live, with high rise flats going like hot cakes at top dollar prices.

The quayside itself is now home to some very contemporary bars, on the lines of Pitcher & Piano, Casa and the like (similar, I suppose, to the City Screen area in York), and even has a Malmaison hotel with its Paris Metropolitan-style cast iron at the front. And, of course, there's the millennium bridge linking it with Gateshead, which we walked across to take a look at the Baltic.

For those that don't know, the Baltic used to be a flour mill, but has now been converted into an art gallery, with free admission. The art is... interesting, to say the least. The top floor has Meccano models of some of the world's great bridges, including the Tyne Bridge - the model had been lined up so that it was at the same angle as the real one, which gives an interesting effect. Another gallery consists of a series of gongs that you can hit with soft mallets (provided), giving a very eerie effect.

There's also plenty of art outside along the quays - you can see more at art-on-the-riverside.co.uk. We had lunch at a Spanish tapas bar called La Tasca - they have restaurants all over the country though this is the first one we'd come across. The food was excellent, and since by now the fog had cleared and the sun had come out, we were able to eat outside. Even the staff were spanish - in fact they spoke spanish to each other. Overall, we were very impressed - if you see one of these you may like to consider visiting.

We then headed back up to Grainger Town, the main shopping area of Newcastle, to pick up some bed linen for me (since Bradford don't provide it) and a few other things. While we were in Bainbridges (part of the John Lewis chain), we had a look at the computer section, and I was surprised to see just how much space they were now devoting to Apple Macs. In the past they've maybe had 3 machines at the most, but now they're taking up similar amounts of space to IBM compatibles - most of which were laptops, actually. They seem to stock the full range - iMacs (both old and new), eMacs, iBooks, PowerMac G4s; even the iPod. They also sold extra keyboards and mice for them too.

Though in retrospect, it's probably not quite so surprising since about 15 minutes walk away is Northumbria University, where Jonathon Ive, the guy who designed most of Apple's range, was a student.

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable day, and an interesting one too.

The author of the BladeEnc MP3 Encoder has officially announce that the encoder will be discontinued. BladeEnd will probably be known as being the first decent open source encoder, and the first to use a DLL interface, but has fallen behind its cousin Lame (which is what I use). It's a pity, but the author admits that he was working on something that was generally inferior.

SlashDot has taken a rather sentimental view, saying that it was a pity and hoping that the author would help out with the newer (and better) Ogg Vorbis format which recently reached version 1.0. The Hydrogen Audio forum has taken a 'good riddance' line, stating BladeEnc as being inferior and useless.

Me? I'm indifferent. By current standards, yes it isn't very good. But back in 1998, it was the bees knees.

Oops... there appears to be in echo in here - this was an exact copy of the post below...

Well, I rang UMIST, and have now been 'released'. I'll probably get confirmation from Bradford on Monday. I'll also need to let the Halifax and the Student Loans Company know that I've changed university. Fun, eh?

Been to Driffield today - my mum buys her bread flour from the nearby Bell Mills Garden Centre and she was about to run out, so she dragged me over there and bought 12Kg of the stuff. But it does make really nice loaves of bread...

Anyway, we didn't spend long in Driffield (it's a typical northern market town so there isn't all that much there), but we did have lunch at The Bell Hotel, which I can thoroughly recommend; the staff were very friendly, the food was made to order in front of you and you can choose what to have in your sandwiches (including what extras), and they served real ale to boot. It's a 3 star hotel in the Best Western chain - if you're in the area, consider staying there.

Just before I go, I've got a bone to pick with Click2Music, who, after sending me absolutely sod all for the past few months, have suddenly sent me 4 emails in the same day. If that wasn't enough, when you open the messages they instantly open a JavaScript popup (even the OE says I'm using the Restricted Sites zone), and to enter some of the competitions that they are running, you have to enter three of your friend's email addresses. Fortunately, bobjones@xteq.com, johnbrown@xteq.com and paulsmith@xteq.com don't exist >:-) .

On second thoughts, I'd better clarify my position with regards to what Bill Thompson has to say - I agree that the US is using the fact that it is the world's most powerful country to exercise its laws on the internet to the advantages of its own corporations, and I agree this is wrong. I also agree that the DMCA is a pile of b***s***.

My reservations are with the use of Trusted Computing. I really don't like this idea. My computer runs what I want it to run, not what Microsoft or any other corporation wants to me to run. I have a vast catalogue of MP3s because its convinient to have them on the PC to play, not because I want to trade them with the rest of the world. In fact, if CDs where cheaper, then I'd buy more of them, because I believe in supporting the artist, not some fatcat music industry boss. Trusted Computing would restrict me way too much, and thwart the development of rival software. It's bad, I tell you. Baaad.

As for US laws, the fact is, I'm not a US citizen. I've never even been to the country. So why should I have to abide by its laws, particularly as I had no say in whether I think the law is good or not? At least here in the UK the public has more leverage when it comes to law-making - you only have to look at the "Snooper's Charter" earlier this year where the public outcry forced the government to make a U-turn and admit the bill shouldn't made law.

Though I suppose we don't have huge corporations heavily lobbying the government - yes it happens but not on the same scale as in the US. I bet half of the bills either passed or awaiting decision in the past few years over there are unconstitutional, due to the fact that they restrict the rights of individuals and grant more rights to the corporations and industry groups like the RIAA.

For the Americans reading this, please don't take it as an attack on your country - if it weren't for the US the world wouldn't be where it is today, and I have many friends living across the pond. But, let's face it, your government sucks.

BlogRolling.com gets better and better. Now, you can add a RecipRoll, which includes all of the blogs that link to you, and also view the 100 most recent additions to people's blogrolls.

There's also the top 100 most-linked to weblogs - top is Ain't Too Proud To Blog with 165 links, closely followed by Chris (155) and Gretchen (106). BingPinkCookie.com (106) and Blogatelle (98) are the other two that make up the top 5.

The blog in 100th place, Tres Producers, has 27 links to it, so that's my target. Come on, link to me, pleeeeease?

Will I be adding a RecipRoll? Erm... no. Why? Well, out of the three blogs that would be on it, there would be this blog (I link to myself, apparently...), Chris and another blog that I really don't like - I tend to disagree with most of what he has to say. While I'm not naming names or sites, it's probably because he is a patriotic American and I'm an open-minded European. Well, that's what I think I am, and I hope that comes across. Like Bill Thompson, in this Register article, and subsequent follow-ups in The Guardian and again in The Register.

The letter from UMIST came today - I definitely don't have the place. I'll ring them up later today - they have offered me alternative courses, but in something completely different (Textiles). Erm... what? I applied to do Computing Science. All of the other degrees on my form where Computing Science (or related). Why do I want to study Textile technology? Talk about adding insult to injury...

So, I'm going to Bradford in 4 weeks. Okay, so Manchester is a nicer city, and the accommodation at UMIST was better. But Bradford isn't bad, and at least I'll have free internet access in my room (albeit on 56k dial-up). And it's closer to home.

Last night, we went out for a meal as a kind-of 'getting into university' celebration. Okay, we only went to the local pub, but we had a nice meal nonetheless (and I was absolutely stuffed afterwards).

The waiting is over - I now know my A-level results. But to be honest they weren't really worth waiting for - I didn't do nearly as well as I had thought I had done.

The best result was a 'C' in Geography, but I only managed dismal 'D' grades in Maths and French (of which I acheived 'A' and 'A*' respectively at GCSE only two years ago), and a 'D' in Computing AS.

What was really annoying was the fact that I would have got a good 'C' in computing, if it weren't for the coursework - that didn't even make 'E' grade. And apparently, my coursework was one of the best in the group. Doesn't give you much faith in the York College computing department, does it?

But every cloud has a silver lining - I was still able to get a place at Bradford University on the course I applied for. I'm still waiting for a response from UMIST, but I doubt I'll get in - by my calculations I was at least 60 points short of the 300 they were asking for. There is the opportunity of internal clearing at UMIST, but I'm unsure whether I really want to do the other courses that are still on offer in the Computing area. One is based around electronics - not good because I'm more of a software junkie - and the other was Computing with Geography, which might be worth it considering I did well in Geography, but do I actually want to do it?

The reason why I'm still waiting for confirmation is down to the fact that the UCAS website appears to have gone down, probably due to the huge numbers of people trying to access it. Fortunately I got in early while it was still working, which is why I know that Bradford accepted me.

Still, I'd find it incredibly annoying if I was trying to find information about clearing, or to get my results, only to find that the server isn't working.

So it's official, York is officially Europe's most haunted city (also covered by BBC News). It's not surprising really - while I've never seen one, there are all manner of ghost walks and cruises to go on. I've been on a couple, including one of the Treasurer's House where I actually got to go down into the cellar where the famous Roman soldiers were spotted (a Roman Road passes directly underneath the building). Interestingly, that tour was on Halloween...

I'm getting ever more worried about tomorrow... wish me luck...

Less than 24 hours to go now - I've already starting getting the 'good luck' txt msgs from some of my friends. What's mildly annoying is that the univerities that I've applied for already know how well I've done, and have done since Monday. Though I suppose that does mean I can get a reasonably prompt answer...

The Halifax also sent along my PIN number for my bank account - despite what it says on the letter I haven't destroyed the number yet because I need to be able to remember it first. I know I can change it, but I don't want it to be anything too obvious, or anything that is the same as my existing passwords (I use alphanumeric passwords since some places require them).

In case you didn't know, there's been another security hole discovered in IE (also covered by The Guardian and various others), and this one is serious. But what is interesting is that only TheRegister.co.uk mentions that the problem also affects Konqueror, the Linux equivalent of Windows Explorer (its the default file browser under KDE but also renders web pages).

Apparently Mozilla isn't affected, though the article does go on to mention Mozilla was not vulnerable, but I'm not sure if that's because it handled the situation properly, or is, ironically, somehow too buggy to be exploited.. Let's hope it was the former.

Today has been interesting and boring at the same time. Boring because I've been at home all day, but interesting because robozilla reared his ugly head today. Which means that the next few days/weeks/months will be spent sorting through these - finding out if the site has moved, or just deleting the listings if nothing can be done. Fun? Not really, but it's in the job decsription, I guess...

Another interesting thing - we seem to have an amphibious friend in the garden. When going to refill the feeder tank for our fountain, I noticed a little frog sat there. He popped again later, so maybe he's going to hang around?

Actually last year we had quite a large frog who took up residence in the cold frame, though he/she hasn't returned this year. Ah well.

And in less than 48 hours time, I'll know where I'm going in September, though after this mix up involving UCAS I'm a little worried...

Just a little update to the site design - if you're browsing using Mozilla, you'll notice a little 'n' in the title bar (and the tab bar if you're browsing with tabs). It's like the 'favicon' thing, but here it's attached to the page using a <link> tag and the file is a (well optimised) PNG image, which is more efficient and more cross-platform compatible than the standard ICO format. Okay, so it doesn't work in IE, but then that only uses favicons when you add the sites to your favourites (hence the name...).

Talking of Mozilla, if what has happened to DaveZilla.com is anything to go by, it could receive a legal challenge over the right to use its name from the trademark owners of Godzilla. This could even affect the ODP, who use a 'reptile-like character' on almost all of the public pages (one of the more light-hearted perks of being an editor is the ability to choose which 'mozzie' is featured on each category). Eugh... don't you just hate it when this sort of thing happens? (thanks to modweb for unearthing that).

And if you haven't been to Chris' blog recently, then go, because he's got an awesome new design :)

So, Winamp3. I've had a tinker around with it, and while I do like some of the improvements, here's my for and against for upgrading (from 2.8):

For:

• New, better skins
• Supports video
• Has a media library
• Skins now cover all dialogs and menus, not just the main window
• Built-in crossfading
• Can co-exist with Winamp 2.x

Against:

• Much, much slower at loading (30 seconds as opposed to 5 in Winamp 2.8)
• Old plug-ins and skins won't work (at least at the moment)
• Currently only full download available
• Some options have been removed (changing the tray icon, for example)
• Seems to require more system resources

So, was it worth upgrading? With hindsight, probably not, since I still use dBpowerAMP as my main player (which is still quicker at loading than Winamp 3), and it is much less efficient (sadly). But as the two can co-exist, even in the same folder, I don't really see the need to remove it as yet.

As they say: "Everything's worth a try once"

Yay! I finally have a bank account!

This time, I went with my mum to the Halifax bank (from which my parents have several accounts), and despite having to wait a few minutes until one of their staff was available, the process was quick and easy - I was approved instantly.

So, I now have an account with £50 sat in it, and my chequebook and other stuff on its way - I don't get a debit card until I cash in a further £50. I've also sent off the form for my student loan, now that I have the bank details, so hopefully I'll have nearly £3000 in there shortly.

While in town, I also picked up both CD1 and CD2 of "Alone" by Lasgo, which is better than "Something" in my opinion. It comes with a good selection of remixes, too :)

Back home, and I'm doing an experiment. After falling in from pressure from others, Mozilla is now my default browser, replacing IE6. And actually, I kinda like it. Okay, so its Java support isn't so good (I've actually turned off Java... I can always load IE if necessary), and some pages won't display properly (those which use over-complicated, non-standard compliant DHTML or that block any Netscape browser). But it's quick and stable, and doesn't impact the system as much as IE does (I have a lot more free memory than usual).

It's now only 3 days until my results come out... help me...

Here's another one of my Dad's holiday slides of me (click for a larger image):

It was taken on one of the water slides at the campsite - my dad used his camera because it has a "sports" mode with a very quick shutter release, which allows for 'action' shots like this one. I think it came out pretty well - it took a little sharpening, cropping and brightening on IrfanView, but no major modifications were necessary.

Oh yeah, and Winamp 3 is finally out. I'm downloading it now - let's hope that the months of work that have gone into have made it as good as its predecessors.

Yeah, I got rejected, apparently because I don't have the "minimum credit points". Well duh! I've never had an account before!

Well, if this is how Abbey National want to treat their customers, I'll just go to the guy called Howard in the goofy glasses at the Halifax. Maybe if I get in early the fact that my parents have a whole multitude of accounts, and have developed a good reputation, will get me in.

So much for being the NUS-approved account - yeah, okay, if you already have an account it might be useful, but if you don't, then, well, forgeddit.

Grrr.... I'm so annoyed about this. Maybe I should write to the NUS, asking them to reconsider?

If it interests you, can see my current desktop image here. I originally uploaded it for the benefit of the other editors in #odp (since Ciaran uploaded his - the girl is fellow ODP editor katy1212), but you can have a look too. The image is from the German computing magazine c't - they have a large selection of desktop wallpapers, many involving the Windows logo and/or penguins.

Ikea. Today was very wet and miserable, so doing a bit of indoor shopping was about the best thing to do. We inded up buying a few things - mostly stuff for me for when I leave home in, err... five weeks. Eck.

As you can see from below, I scanned in the photograph of when the bird landed on my head while on holiday - Dad managed to slide a sneaky shot in. Actually, I'm quite impressed at how it came out - after a little sharpening and cropping it was fine - no need for adjustments to the contrast/brightness/colour balance etc. It was scanned from a slide, BTW.

I also updated my Blogger Code, since I've now been blogging for over 6 months (time flies, doesn't it). My answers to a couple of questions also changed, so I've provided a convenient 'Decode' link for you.

Tomorrow I'm off to see my grandparents. They're off to the same area of France that we were in this year, so I'll be taking my holiday snaps and sharing guidebooks and all that jazz.

Never work with children or animals. (click for larger image)

Well, Abbey National never rang. So much for my compliments on good customer service. I'll pop in on Monday and see if I can sort it out - tomorrow I'm doing something with mum. We haven't decided what yet, but it won't be in London (my mum can't face it) and it'll be indoors (because it's due to pour down).

I've also uploaded a robots.txt file to the server, mainly to prevent the indexing of my stats, which I casually happened to link to in the past - it now turns up on various searches. Thanks to hstyri for pointing me to SearchEngineWorld's useful guide to how to format the files. It was also partly inspired by an updating of the ODP robots.txt file so that Bookmarks is now no longer indexed, in the hope that various editors will be discouraged from listing sites there to try to improve their rankings (particularly fradulent editors who sign up just for that purpose).

And the fudge? It's been... um... eaten. *burp*

Although I've seen links to it all over the place, it was only today that I came across BlogTree, through a link in Guardian Online WebWatch. I normally read Online in print form, but it didn't arrive today, so I've had to make do with the website version, sans images.

Anyway, BlogTree. It's a project aimed at uncovering the genealogical links between weblogs. You may not think that there is such a thing, or if there is, it's something incredibly complicated, but actually, it's simple. You select one or more blogs that inspired the creation of your blog, which then become your parents. Your siblings are blogs which share the same parent(s), and your children are blogs which were inspired by yours.

AFAIK, it was Chris and Gretchen, who, way back in January, inspired me to create this blog, so they are my 'parents' (fitting that I choose a husband and wife, eh? ;). I have a few siblings, but so far I'm childless. If you like, you can view my 'pedigree'.

incidentally, Gretchen is both a parent and a sibling. Now how does that work?

In other news... dmoz is back up (it was actually down for an hour and a half, instead of the 3 hours we were originally told), I've eaten all of the fudge, and Abbey National still haven't rung. They really are pushing the 48 hour response time - they've got 2 hours to get back to me at this rate. Hmph.

Yay... dmoz is down again. Though this time it is for maintenance, and it's only for 3 hours...

Just got a message via AOL from Dennis, thanking me for linking to him. No problem! In return, he's linked to me... maybe a Google PageRank of 7 is more likely now...

Oh yeah, and I just got an email from Neil McIntosh, deputy editor of Guardian Online over a slight problem on OnlineBlog regarding its permalinks. Thanks Neil, I feel priviledged :)

Does my bum look big in this weblog?

Here's a rather interesting subject specific blog: Don't Link To Us!. It features commentary on sites that prohibit links to it from other sites, or prohibit deeplinks, or... well, whatever really. Dixons, the high street electrical dealer is an example, as I found out back in January.

Ugh... don't you just hate it when you make one slight mistake in the HTML and it messes up the whole page? I removed some redundant HTML from the template, but forgot to remove a < character, which whacked out the 'posted at' text and turned the 'permalink' link into plain text. Oops.

Finally... another BlogRolling.com user has blogrolled me! Here's a thanks to Slobokan, presumed blogmeister of Slobokan's Site O' Schtuff, though whether he has linked me because he like reading, or because Chris and Furo link to me is perhaps open to debate (Michael - if you're reading this, feel free to enlighten me here).

His blog is interesting, if a little messy (like most Movable Type blogs it has links galore on either side and takes up the full page). I did, however, like the 'Boycott Schtuff' section on the right - apparently he's currently boycotting AOL, the American stores Best Buy and Home Depot, Saudi Arabia, and, er... Florida. Well, someone has to boycott it, I suppose.

I'm gradually working my way through the fudge - it's actually really nice. It's the homemade chocolate covered type, in a variety of flavours: vanilla, chocolate, banana, mint, strawberry and coconut. I would have bought some of the alcoholic fudges (containing rum, whiskey, Irish Cream and gawd knows what else), but I, erm, didn't. Maybe next year, if I end up going.

And the bank account? Still no phone call. But then they did say 48 hours, and that was only 24 hours ago. I just hope they don't ring up asking for a 'Mr Turner' - I've already told a certain caller in the past that 'Mr Turner is not available' when the call was actually for me and not my father...

Hmm... just found a bag of fudge at the back of the fridge from when I went to the Yorkshire Show. Ah well, I think it's still edible...

I just entered The Best British Blog Competition for the fun of it. Let's face it, I'm not going to win, despite what cbowar told me (Do any of the Spice Girls have blogs? If not, you're bound to win.). Though with PlasticBag.org out of the running (see the article and interview), maybe it won't be so difficult after all?

Oh yeah, and I gave up trying to get RSSify to recognise the blog link as being the actual entry and not the first link it found - it would mean:

1. another redesign
   - or -
2. including the Enetation links.

And besides, apart from Syndic8.com and AmphetaDesk, there isn't exactly much that uses the RSS feed anyway. And since Blogger pro is still only $35 (that's less than £24), I might well upgrade to that, which now has RSS support built in. It's certainly developping into a killer Blog tool.

If yesterday's change was too insignificant for you, how's this? Well, I did hint at a re-design ;)

I actually rewrote the HTML almost from scratch, which allowed me to experiment with using a tableless design, like on WannabeGirl and various other sites. Instead of using table tags to arrange the layout, sections are marked using div tags which are given absolute positioning using CSS. Although it means it looks terrible on older browsers, it does allow the page to load more sequentially, instead of one big lump. Or at least it would if Enetation's server wasn't so slow...

The Geek Code has gone, if only temporarily, because it looked messy when put on the sidebar -it may return at the bottom of the screen sometime in the future. The RSS link has swapped place with the 'Open in new window' script, and users of BlogRolling.com can instantly add me to their blogrolls, if they wish (please, pretty please :). And by moving the PermaLink link so that it is above the text, I hope that the RSS feed will parse it as being the correct link...

Oh yeah, the bank account. I haven't got it. I think I picked the single worst day to get a student account from Abbey National - they're changing the accounts tomorrow, as luck would have it, and it means I loose out on my £40 incentive/gimmick for joining. I'm still waiting to be approved as a result, but I'll find out either tomorrow or Thursday. Ah well, you win some, you loose some.

Despite that, I was very impressed with the service I received - I'm quite confident that I've made the right decision here. Well, assuming I get accepted, anyway.

And today I'm going to get one.

Basically, I need it to get my student loan, and without a bank account, I can't get it. That means I'm out of pocket by about £3000, or $4500, or €4500. The big thing that has been looming over me is "where to go?". The problem is that there are so many banks, all with their own student accounts. Fortunately, the power of the web has made the choice a little easier.

I've decided to go for the Abbey National. The business pages of the UK press have been at them quite a lot (see Google News), but I feel more comfortable with them. Firstly, their student account is approved by the NUS (which is a big thing considering how much the NUS is campaigning for students over debts), and secondly, they have a great website. Not only does it look good, but everything is well explained without layers and layers of jargon - I don't really understand much about finance so it was good to have everything explained well.

The other reason for going there is that they are a (former) building society. That means that I can also get loans and mortgages from them. And, if I maintain a good record, I might get preferential rates. It's the reason why I didn't go with HSBC - they're only a bank.

I was considering going to Co-op, but their website is terrible. They're supposed to be an ethical bank, yet I can't make head or tail of what they're on about.

Although I can apply online, I've decided not to - I have to provide proof of identification (read: my passport) and I don't want this to have to be posted. Instead, I'm going in to town this afternoon and applying in person. That way, I can get a few further questions answered - one of Abbey's account options is a Visa Debit card, which sounds interesting - I'm determined to avoid credit cards like the plague, but still want to be able to buy stuff online.

I've changed the site code again. You probably won't notice, unless you have JavaScript disabled, in which case you will.

Basically, I've moved over to SSI, so the entire layout is controlled by external files. Each page now consists only of content - the rest is added on the server. That means I don't need to update every page when I want to change the design (which may be soon - I'm getting bored of this one :). The guestbook doesn't support SSI unfortunately, but I guess that's a minor caveat.

There is a good reason why I didn't do this sooner - until now I thought you had to rename all the file extensions to .shtml. Since I know some of you have linked articles, changing the extension would break all of the links. Fortunately, since this server runs on Apache, I was able to add a .htaccess file, which told the server to process SSI on .html files, and all was rosy. Thanks to newwave for that.

Ugh... the ODP is slow again - staff reckons it is an automated script that is caning the Add URL mechanism and effectively DoSing the whole site. A fix is being worked on, but it could be a while. Ho hum...

I've finally caught up with my holiday emails (and thanks to Fred Langa for featuring X-Setup today :)), and have now got the four non-dynamic pages on this site to be W3C-compliant - they are the Bio, Contact Me, Blog Archive and Webcam pages. The Bio also got a minor update.

I also got around to updating ZoneAlarm to version 3.1 (I've been using 2.6 up to now). Apart from the UI changes, there aren't many new features, other than when alerts are set to off, the system tray icon doesn't flash to say you have an alert - which is good, because I hated that :). And despite what I've heard from people, it is as efficient as past releases, in my experience.

And congratulations to Ciaran, for passing his driving test :).

Two new ODP weblogs have been added on the left, one is bunda's, who I linked to yesterday, and the other is trystan's (aka Jaime) who is one of the ODP chat regulars. And, as you'll notice, its hosted on this server :). Though I won't make any claims for the design...

Thanks to fellow ODP editor g1smd, the webcam page now validates as proper XHTML 1.0 (transitional). While non of the Blogger-powered pages will ever validate (unless Blogger changes its software), it's nice to know that at least one page will, and I'll modify the rest in due course so that the site produces as few errors as possible.

The ODP itself isn't down today, but it is too slow to be able to do anything, hence my work here.

One of my fellow editors, bunda, mentioned something interesting in his weblog, and it reminded me of something I read in the Guardian this morning, about atheism in America, taken from the Free Inquiry.

I was shocked to read this quote from George Bush Snr: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.. As the article put it, To see how outrageous this is, try substituting 'Jews' for 'atheists'. Why do people, particularly some Americans (emphasis on the some), have such a problem with us atheists? They seem to be okay with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and the like, who also believe in a God (or gods), but can't understand those who don't believe any God, and accuse us of being "communists" (so... okay, I occasionally get communist tendencies... doesn't make me a bad person does it?).

What scares me is the "Religious Right" of America who lobby state officials to introduce laws that hinder atheism, like in Alabama where biology textbooks carry a warning sticker to remind people to take the theory of evolution with a pinch of salt. Now I'm not going into which theory I think holds the most water, but that's just not fair. You don't see that on copies of the Qu'ran do you?

Sorry for ranting, but this really got my p*ssed off today. It just feels that some places in the States are oppresive towards other religions. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, or in Saudi Arabia, or Iraq. And I don't see Alabama on Bush's "Axis of Evil"...

Yay! The ODP is back up again! And I'm off to bed, see you tomorrow...

I don't normally comment on news much, but seeing as it could be another hour until I'm back into dmoz, here's my opinions on the following news articles...

Iraq invites UN weapons inspector to talks
Good move! However much I hate Saddam Hussein, I have to applaud his government (?) for making this decision. If the situation in Iraq can be sorted/alleviated without violence, then I'm all for it. Bush is going to have an even harder time getting allies together for any war on Iraq - Europe is opposed and even Tony Blair looks like he's switching sides. And there are elections looming.

ITV Digital ruling spells ruin for league clubs
Like the Neil Hamilton v Mohammed al-Fayed case, I actually wanted both sides to loose, since they are both capable of incompetence. Why anyone would want to pay extra to watch league (as opposed to Premiership) football is beyond me, especially as many people already pay for Sky Sports. Similarly, the Football League shouldn't have been so reliant on money from a source that was already struggling. The fact is, no-one watched ITV Sport - in many cases, for the amount ITV paid per viewer per game, each viewer could have been taken to the actual match in a luxury limousine, have a seat in the priviledged box, have a meal, and then be put up in a hotel for the night. Hopefully, this is a large enough kick-up-the-arse for everyone to realise that the situation was spiralling out of control. So there will be casualties. But that's the price for greed.

It's also good that the BBC have taken over and brought in a sensible free package for Digital Terrestrial. The fact is, most people don't want subscription channels to pay for on top of their license fee, and hopefully this way the 'great analogue turnoff' will be more of a reality. Digital TV is good - we've had it for 2 1/2 years - hopefully more people will realise this now that it has less commitment.

Hmm... the ODP is still down, but the Public Forum is buzzing with editors. And it gave me the chance to update Argus to version 2.1 (can't see any real changes) and SmartFTP to 1.0.969 (new options dialog and more secure FTP features).

The ODP is down and I'm bored. I've just been out shopping with my mum, trying to find a jazzy shirt, but failing miserably. Ah well.

Oh, and thanks for rating my blog on Hot or Not - I'm up to 6.1 now. Someone even thought I was worthy of 8 out of 10 :D

Since everyone else has been doing it...

Is my Blog HOT or NOT?