December 2002 Archives

It's New Years Eve, so I guess that means I have to do one of these 'looking back' posts. 2002 was an interesting year: it was the year that I:

• legally became an adult (in the UK at least)
• moved away from home
• chose, and later attended a university
• got a computer of my very own
• did poorly in my A-level exams
• stopped using Internet Explorer
• was rejected for a bank account, then got one from another bank
• started a weblog, then restarted it again
• got a webcam
• visited France and Belgium, over 3 separate trips abroad
• gained a social life
• watched my first DVD
• first ventured into Linux
• made new friends, and lost some others
• started to learn Java
• witnessed another of my cousins getting married
• became an editall at the ODP, and met some of the editors in person

As for looking ahead - I'm unsure as to whether I'll be going out tonight, to celebrate the new year, or if I'll be staying in with my parents. I have exams in mid-January, and again in June, then a long summer when I'll probably find myself a job. Then in the autumn, my grandparents celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. But other than that, I have no idea what 2003 will bring.

I'm not personally gay, but happened upon the Gay.com UK site today from Google News, after trying to to find a story about a laptop user burning his genetalia. The site is notable, because unlike other news sites, it provides its own RSS feed, and, if you visit it from a search results page (such as this one), it will highlight the search terms you were looking for. It also makes heavy use of >link< tags - if you visit the site in Mozilla with the Site Navigation Bar enabled, you'll be able to use it to navigate the site, as you can with this site and many other Movable Type weblogs. It's quite a nifty feature, actually - pity it isn't enabled by default, or included in Phoenix.

The site also uses XHTML 1.0 Transitional, though a quick run through the validator throws 390 errors. Eww.

And as for burning your genitalia with a laptop... that guy must have one very warm laptop, or a very long attention span. I use a laptop on my lap all the time, and my genitalia is still fully functional, to the best of my knowledge.

I've had more trouble with PayPal. Long-time readers may remember my previous troubles. Since then, I've managed to register my mother's credit card with them, and can now actually use the account. But only with her credit card.

You see, because I don't have a US bank account, I can only use a credit card as payment. While PayPal are happy to take my UK bank account's details, when it comes to actually making a purchase, I can't actually use it.

My stance on credit cards hasn't really changed - as it is I already owe the UK government nearly £1000 in student loans and will owe them about £2900 by the time April rolls around. Credit card debts are the last thing I want.

Ciaran has a new post on his blog journal, but actually it was me who posted it :). He's up in Scotland at the moment, and sent a txt msg to me to ask me to update his blog journal for him.

Ciaran uses his own, homegrown blogging system, instead of a software package like MT or b2. He wrote it in Perl, and it currently supports trackback and pinging to Weblogs.com. The entry composition form is a combination of a LiveJournal-esque style and MT - you can specify a current mood (happy, sad etc.), current location and what music you are listening to, and there's provision for extended entries like in MT. Entries are saved in text files on the server.

Although it is a mere 13KB in size, compared to Movable Type's 2MB when fully installed, it doesn't yet support editing or deletion of posts - those have to be done manually. But it has the potential to be a good basic blogging system, if Ciaran keeps it going.

Since I've had 1390 hits where the page couldn't be found, I've decided to add a custom 404 page. Now, when the page doesn't exist, you'll see this friendly error page, instead of the standard Apache one. A post on the LG Help forums lets you know how to do it - as long as you have an Apache web server you're set.

Though for some reason the first time I added it, all the pages returned a 500 Internal Server error. I don't quite know why, but removing a couple of 301/302 redirect lines from the .htaccess file seemed to do the trick.

There's now a 'page mods' box towards the bottom of the sidebar, which will let you select which theme you'd like the blog to display in. Besides the current Christmas theme, there's the normal Blue theme, and an unstyled version. While this works fine using Mozilla and Phoenix, IE won't let you access the blue theme. That's Microsoft's problem, not mine.

The code, by the way, was stolen from the Mozilla 1.0 Start Page.

I also made another CSS change, based on the one I made on Monday - IE wasn't inheriting the font size again, this time on the newly updated sidebar headings. I also tidied the CSS files up a bit by removing some redundant lines.

If you're wondering why I go into so much detail about CSS changes, it's because I don't really mind you opening up the source code and seeing how I've done things. After all, this is mostly how I learn - to stop you doing that would be very hypocritical of me.

For those of you who don't read Revolving Duck, you're missing on a wee bit of a saga. Basically Kim's server burped on Movable Type and denied any access to her CGI-bin folder, making her blog pretty difficult to update.

Well, she's now using b2, the same software as DaveZilla. Unlike MT, it's powered by PHP, and is a little more instantaneous; the pages are generated when requested, rather than saved statically when an entry is published. I still prefer MT, but b2 is certainly the next best thing; certainly, it's better than Blogger.

I've pruned the blogroll, removing one that I no longer read and a couple that have gone stale for a considerable about of time. If I've removed yours, please don't take it personally - the blogs I link to are ones that I like to read often, and it isn't necessarily a reflection on the quality of your blogging.

The new entry is Six Log, a blog by Ben and Mena Trott, writers of the brilliant Movable Type software. It includes information about new blogging technologies, particularly where they integrate with MT, and has featured Richy C's MTRefSearch plugin in the past, along with information about RSD, which I added to this blog a couple of weeks ago.

Just come across my page The Blogging Ecosystem, which shows all of the blogs I like to, and those that link back. Okay, so BlogRolling already does that, but only if the other person is using BlogRolling, so this is a little more useful. It's also better than Google because it only shows blogs, and it seems to be able to interpret BlogRolling JavaScript code, which Google cannot.

You can also look at Dive into Mark's Recommend Reading page, which includes a few blogs that I recognise and do (very) occasionally read, such as Doc Searls, Aint Too Proud To Blog and Lockergnome Bits and Bites.

Talking of which, I think Randy's blog is up for the chop from the Blogroll. It was last updated on September 12th...

I'm surprised I haven't already said anything, but a security flaw has been discovered in Winamp that could allow an MP3 with a specially coded ID3 tag to execute arbitrary code, like a virus or a trojan (security-conscious IE users will be familiar with this concept but Mozilla users may have a little more difficulty).

The flaw is easily fixed by downloading Winamp 2.81 or 3 again - it was fixed on the 17th December 2002 so if your Winamp was obtained earlier than then, then you're at risk.

So, what have I been doing since my last little 'life' update?

While browsing MandrakeSoft's website, I came across Les Trophees du Libre, or "The Free Software Competition" in English. It's a competition, like the Webby Awards, but for open source software, such as those distributed under the Free Software Foundation's GPL.

The range of sponsors is impressive - MandrakeSoft is one, along with France Telecom, Sun Microsystems and the European branch of the Free Software Foundation. It's open to projects in both the French and English languages, though the English version of the website is a rather poor translation from French and has several key pages (such as the Rules and Regulations) missing. I could've done a better job myself, if only they'd asked ;).

Unfortunately Xteq don't have any GPLd projects - a couple do have the source code included, but X-Setup, our flagship product, is largely closed source (bar the plug-ins). Which, despite only being released on Monday, has achieved nearly 400 000 downloads. Not bad, eh? :)

Over the Crimbo break, I had a great idea for how I could redesign this blog. The design would be similar to WannabeGirl.org (whose new design is great), but different enough not to look too alike.

So, I spent this afternoon getting my ideas from my head onto the web. Two and a half hours later, I gave up. The new design looked worse than this one.

You see, Firda has quite a sparse home page; I don't. And I really couldn't bare to see some things go, to be frank.

I have, however, tweaked this design to make it a little more accessable. Those of you with Mozilla 1.2.1 or above will be able to access a third stylesheet, which is designed for those with impaired vision (the text is made larger and the colours are negated to give higher contrast). The post titles now use <h3> tags and the headings on the sidebar are now specified by <h4> ; the text is now in sentence case in the HTML source but is made lowercase by the stylesheet. This all means that the site should look much better in older or text-based browsers.

And at the request of mwaf a 'skip to navigation' link is provided for those in text browsers, so that they can skip the main page content and jump to the links that would normally be on the sidebar.

And while I'm on the subject of free software, the latest version of X-Setup, 6.3, has been released. This is one of the programs I contribute to, and includes some new plug-ins for Mozilla, plus other new plug-ins and updates. Currently only the full version is available for download but a patch for 6.2 users will probably come in the new year.

I've given Spybot a spin, and although I do generally prefer it, it did crash when I asked it to fix a few minor problems. But it is certainly much faster and more thorough than Ad-Aware was, and it will also remove cookies and log files for those who are super-paranoid. I'll try it again sometime. And, if you're interested, I didn't have any spyware installed. Phew.

Many of you will (hopefully) be using Lavasoft Ad-Aware to remove spyware from your computer. Well, you may wish to change.

SpywareInfo.com have published a newsletter article encouraging people to switch to a different utility, due to the arrogant attitudes of Lavasoft staff, the fact that no updates have been made in over 3 months and that the next version is nearly a month late.

The article does offer alternatives, including the free Spybot S&D, which is what I'm about to start using. An update for this was only released a few days ago, so it's still current.

beebware's post about Christmas made me think. As you may know, I'm an atheist, so why am I celebrating Christmas, which is essentially a Christian holiday?

Well, firstly because my family celebrates it, and because you can't avoid it. But also because it's great to have a time for giving, receiving and spending time with loved ones. Despite what some may say, I wouldn't say these were merely Christian values; I think anyone would enjoy receiving gifts no matter what religion they practiced.

In fact probably the only difference between my perception of Christmas and that of a Christian is the reason for celebrating. From my point of view, it is just a convinient time of the year to get together, and has traditionally been held at this time of year for many centuries. The fact that Jesus was allegedly born today, is, in my mind, irrelevant. For me, Christmas is about snowmen, polar bears, penguins and Santa Claus; the same as anyone else's perception, just without the religious bits.

Anyhow, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, and that you don't get too stuffed up on turkey. Even though we're actually having ribs of beef today - my mother doesn't like turkey.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The screenshot (click to enlarge) is from one of my presents - the Hornby Virtual Railway. It's a CD-ROM game that allows you to build your own virtual train set, based on the real Hornby Railways kits. It doesn't have Hornby's full range, but I imagine it could be useful for people wanting to build their own layouts from scratch but not wanting to buy loads of track that they don't need. Indeed, the initial planning of where to put the track is difficult as not all pieces go together; you have to get the angles and lengths correct. A little frustrating but fun once the final layout is ready. It's quite quick - the layout I built took me the best part of half an hour to do.

I also got the Epson Stylus C42Plus printer that we bought on that expensive day in November, along with chocolate and several items of clothing; 3 t-shirts, 2 shirts, a sweatshirt and some 'karaoke king' socks (it wouldn't be Christmas without socks, now would it?). I also got a mousemat, a portfolio wallet and a FiloFax diary, which was nice.

Woohoo! 200 entries in 3 months :).

This is another CSS change; I've finally fixed the long-standing problem with IE making the calendar font too large, causing the sidebar to overlap onto the text. Note that this is an IE problem; Mozilla, which conforms to the CSS standards, does not have this problem.

The nerdy explanation is thus: In Mozilla, the font in the table is inherited from the div tag used for the sidebar, as it should be. In IE, the div tag is ignored and the font is inherited from the page body. Although this means it gets the font name right, it meant that the size was wrong.

Anyway, all tables should display using a smaller font in IE from now on.

Just discovered the guestbook hasn't been working for some time. It should now be fixed, hopefully. So now you have no excuse for not leaving an (intelligent) comment.

Yes, I've changed the colours for Christmas. If you find them unbearable, fear not; for the original style sheet is still available. In Mozilla 1.2.1 (and above), go to View > Use Style, and then 'Original Colours'. The unstyled version of the page is also there.

You know what? I think Tony's on to something with the Creative Commons license. Certainly, that's the license I'd like to follow - maybe I'll implement it sometime.

I'm back home after my weekend away. It was nice to see everyone on my mum's side of the family again, and, as you'd expect, I spent most of my time recapping what it's like to be at university (even though both my cousins have already been to university). Going over was fun; there was thick fog up on Saddleworth Moor (the high-up bit of the M62), bringing visibility down to a little over a 100 metres. Ironically the fog warning lights didn't appear until we'd started to drop down into Greater Manchester, by which time it was mostly clear.

Coming back today was also foggy, though we were at least able to see the cars in front. We did unfortunately have to stop at Tesco on the way back, which, being 2 days before Christmas (yay!) was hell. The car park was nearly full and the shop itself was absolutely chokka. But we survived.

MandrakeSoft, makers of my Linux distro of choice Mandrake Linux, are in a bit of a pickle. They're in debt by $4million.

So, in an effort to get back up there, they've sent emails to all registered users, basically begging for cash and pointing them at this page.

While I was a bit annoyed that they've had to resort to this, I hope they get into better standing soon. It'd be a shame to see MandrakeSoft go under, considering all they've done for the Linux community.

This, by the way, will be the last post for a few days since I'm going to see my auntie and uncle in Stoke for the weekend, and will almost certainly not have a chance to use the net while I'm there. See you soon :).

Yes, it's an old quiz, but I this category was getting empty...

Take the ICQuiz!

I found out what I was doing wrong with the smileys. I'd put the opening and closing MTMacroApply tags in separate modules, which MT doesn't like. So, I now present smileys!!

:) ;) :D :O >:-) :(

They're the standard UBB smileys, as used on the ODP internal fora. Cool eh?

Well, beebware revealed his secrets, but unfortunately they didn't work. After installing the MTMacro plug-in, I kept getting a rather nasty error whenever I tried to rebuild so I removed it. I may try again at another date.

This should be the last post for today (post number 7!), as I'm off for a shower and then going to bed. See you tomorrow.

MozillaZine's current poll has a rather interesting topic at the moment: "Which Mozilla developer would you most like to have round for Christmas dinner?". The poll has 1244 responses so far, after being opened on Monday, with David Hyatt as the current leader.

MozillaZine apparently takes no responsibility if any of the named developers actually turn up on Christmas Day. Me? I voted for Asa Dotzler. Why? Because.

Actually, his site has some very funky CSS - it looks like it's using frames but in fact it isn't. Very interesting.

Yes, another blog change :). I was actually going to implement this yesterday, but the version was about to be updated so I decided to wait until today.

What is it? RSD - or "Really Simple Discovery". Basically Joe Blogger puts a special XML file in his base directory, which says what blogging tool he/she is using, and what its XML:RPC URL is. That way it makes it easier for other software to communicate with the blogging tool.

Ben Hammersley, one of the more famous bloggers and am occasional Guardian columnist, lets you know how to implement it into Movable Type and the official document is available at Archipelago. The next Movable Type release will have RSD support as standard, as Mena Trott explains.

Might as well add another plug-in - this time, if I've written an extended entry, it'll tell you how many words it is before you click on the 'Read more...' link. try it :)

Thanks to David Raynes, I now have a 'random entry' section on the sidebar. This is created using his MTRandomEntries plug-in, which is the first plug-in I've added so far. It probably won't be the last either.

The idea is that every time I publish a new entry, another entry will be chosen at random and shown there. Let's see how it works :).

One thing I certainly won't be asking Santa for this Christmas will be a genuine Ogg Vorbis thong. It's among a range of novelty items available with Xiph.org branding, including a pair of boxer shorts with the Ogg Vorbis specification on them. How nice.

Fred Langa featured one of my emails in today's LangaList! It was in response to last week's feature on Bayesian spam filters - Fred was interested to see if any subscribers had found other products with Bayesian filters in them. I naturally mentioned Mozilla 1.3 :).

Been doing a bit of general web browsing for the first time in a while, mainly due to lack of free time behind a computer. Starting at beebware's latest spam article, I went forward to Alan Ralsky's file on Spamhaus.org (great for anyone wanting to seek revenge against the world's most famous spammer), and the their Information for Spammers page.

This was interesting because it says where Spamhaus.org's servers are located - The Principality of Sealand. This is a man-made island that declared itself a micronation in 1967, and is located 6 miles off the east coast of England. The reason why Spamhaus.org is located here is the general lack of laws; in fact the only hosting company there, HavenCo, says about the only thing that is illegal is child pronography; though HavenCo do prohibit the use of their servers for hacking and spamming. incidentally HavenCo hosts Sealand's governmental website, linked above.

The micronation even has its own ODP category, along with several other micronations. Not all of them exists; some are jokes or just items of fantasy. but what really amused me was the Off Earth category. Yes, people have claimed areas of Mars and the Moon as principalities already, and even written constitutions for them. Some people must have a lot of time on their hands.

Before you move your server over to Sealand, be aware that international laws mean that, because it is within 12 miles of England, it may come under UK law. And the Home Office doesn't recognise it is a state; indeed a search of their site thinks I'm looking for sealant.

I'm having one of those days where I can't seem to be able to get anything done. Firstly I try to go to watch the trailer for the CFH Help-a-Thon, Chris' 18 hour Boxing Day TV show. Except that it wouldn't work after the first attempt. The modem light kept going on, so I'm wondering whether Windows Media Player was trying to download it via the phone line instead of the ethernet connection which I normally use at home. It shouldn't; my internet connection properties are set to 'Never dial a connection' at the moment - this is because Mozilla Mail tries to dial out if it can't find the mail server via ethernet when 'Dial a connection when a network connection is not present' is selected. And unfortunately MyRealBox does tend to go down rather a lot. Like now, for instance.

I also tried copying and pasting the URL used in the HTML source and opening that manually in Windows Media Player, but it seemed unable to reach the server. Very strange.

I then installed the UABar widget for Phoenix, which unfortunately has the same effect as Digger; it can crash the browser. So it is a Phoenix problem, but at least it's one that can be avoided to some degree. It did mean that I lost the entry I was typing at the time, which I'll retype later.

It seems that the saviour of Christmas, Santa Claus, has his own blog. Allegedly.

(thanks to Gretchen for the link)

My nose is still as leaky as ever, but after a good night's sleep last night, I'm feeling a little better today. I'm due to set off for Bradford shortly - there's a train at 10:47 from York to get me into Bradford on time. In fact, it only takes just over 45 minutes - normally the York to Bradford trains take an hour or more. Not that I'm complaining of course...

The weather doesn't look too good, sadly; rain certainly isn't the best weather to have when showing people around.

I really am not at all well - it's not even 9pm yet I'm in my pyjamas after having had a very warm bath. And I have to be up to do the Computing department open day tomorrow.

Tom invited me out in York, but as you can imagine, I turned down the offer. My head feels like it is made of stone. My theory is the cold virus was a little narked off when it left me largely unaffected last time, so it's hit me with a vengeance this time. Though looking on the bright side, at least it isn't flu.

Bleurgh. This is the second cold I've had in only a month. My nose is like a non-stop tap and my throat is raw.

Helped my dad put the Christmas decorations and tree up today, and stood out in the rain while he draped some outdoor festive lights over one of the trees in the back garden. I'm sure the birds in there will really appreciate their nests being illuminated.

Also had the opportunity to download no less than 6 updates from Windows Update, totalling nearly 20MB. It's situations like this that make a fast internet connection so much nicer.

Woohoo! I'm home again!

I did end up staying in last night, but that was because the FND was sold out by the time we got there, which was just after midnight. And seeing as I had to be in a fit state this morning, I decided that sleep was the best option to take. That was coupled with the fact that I'd been drinking White Lightning (cheap cider for those unfamiliar with it) most of the night and it was really starting to affect me. That stuff goes straight to my head.

My parents came to pick me and my belongings up at 11:30am this morning, true to their word. The new Ford Focus is nice - the acceleration is much better than the Scenic and the improved suspension means that I don't feel every bump (I'm usually in the back so I end up on top of one of the rear wheels). The legroom in the back is also good, particularly for someone like me who is approaching 6 feet tall. Pity the boot (read: trunk) is a little small, but hey, you can't have everything.

We went home via Ikea, where I picked up a table for my printer (which I'm getting for Christmas... 11 days to go :)). Despite it being a Saturday in the run up to Christmas, it actually wasn't all that busy, which is strange. Not that I'm complaining, of course...

Yep, 1.3a is out, and I've decided to give it a shot to see what it's like. Obviously I'll be keeping 1.2 - I'll be installing in a separate folder. But the enhancements to Mozilla Mail make this too much to miss. After all, since when did Outlook Express get any major updates? It's hardly changed in nearly 4 years.

The Release Notes give full information about possible issues and what's new, and if you're convinced, get yourself a build.

Most of my clothes are now packed, barring some smart clothes for tonight in case I end up going out (which, judging by the number of people going home today, is looking slim). The stereo, computer and everything else will go in tonight and tomorrow morning.

In a way, I wish I was going home today, since just about everyone else is, but then again I might as well have an early night and try to get back in to a 'normal' sleep pattern. After all, I did have a big night out on Wednesday, and I'm not going out tonight on my own.

Although I've enjoyed the past 13 weeks here, I'll be glad to be home. Access to a TV, broadband, my mum to cook for me, no work to do, no lectures... and Christmas is coming too :).

In a moment of minor boredom, I thought I'd check out an interview on the American TV channel TechTV, which involves Mozilla. It's actually quite interesting - it gives you the background to Netscape's downfall and how it hopes to fight back with Mozilla (and Chimera which is also featured).

Two points in the clip intrigued me. Firstly, I've been pronouncing XUL, the language used to create the user interface (and any add-ons) in Mozilla, as 'ex-yoo-ell'. Apparently, its true pronounciation is 'zool', which I seem to remember was a platform game from the early 90s. I still have it in fact, though I dread to think what the speed will be like on a 900Mhz processor - it was already too fast on my parents' old 486...

The other point was the interviewer saying that Mozilla is slow. I personally find it marginally faster than IE (Phoenix in particular is waaaaay faster), but maybe my computer is set up differently.

Okay, I've officially decided it's now the run-up to Christmas. Last night was Livingstone's Christmas bash, and actually was one if the better nights out that I've had since being here. The music was good, traversing pretty much the full range (including happy hardcore - Bang!'s original version of "Shooting Star", which was recently covered by Flip & Fill), and of course, the obligatory Christmas songs (Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas", Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas", Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" et al). Hearing those at full volume in a festively decorated club really puts you in the Christmas spirit - even though Christmas day itself is a good 13 days away.

I also managed to drink a full pint of cider all by myself. This is a landmark for me since it's the first time I've drunk a full pint of an alcoholic beverage in such a way. I'm not a lager or a bitter person, you see.

Unfortunately my camera developed a fault in the zoom motor last night, rendering it unusable - the lens keeps jamming. Luckily I was able to rescue the film - the wind-on motor still worked and the camera didn't need to be switched on to be able to get it wound back - and it was nearly finished anyway. I'll take it in for developing today, hopefully.

Today is also the day when I start packing things away to take home on Saturday - not everything is coming back, but I will need things like my clothes, stereo and, of course, my laptop.

I'm giving Phoenix 0.5 a second 'review' because despite a lot of opening and closing browser windows today, it has yet to crash. I now believe the cause of the troubles was actually Diggler, or rather its Phoenix counterpart Digger - after disabling this yesterday the problem seems to have gone away, which is a relief.

(you can read the first review of 0.5 here)

You may have noticed that I've now started a Gecko Browsers category - this because I talk about Mozilla, Netscape, Phoenix and the others quite a lot, and it makes the posts easier to find.

And finally, Kim has moved her Revolving Duck weblog to a brand spanking new URL (and one that is easier to remember, too), so if you link to it, update your bookmarks!

Hmmm... what with firewalls and fire detection systems, I'm going to be #1 on Google for 'alarm' at this rate :).

Anyway, the reason why I'm posting at some ungodly hour is... you've guessed it, another fire alarm, though this time because smoke was actually detected. Unfortunately the smoke detecters aren't sophisticated enough to be able to determine between a room on fire and rather burnt pizza, so when my colleagues down the corridor accidently neglected a late night snack while it was in the oven, we all had to leave our rooms just in case it was something a little more major.

Thankfully the source of the 'fire' was contained and no-one was hurt, and considering this is the first one for a while and was a genuine accident most people were in a lighthearted mood about it. Even an 01:20 in the morning, which is generally commendable.

The downside is that there is now a slight smell of burning creeping under the door, which is playing havoc with my asthma...

Maybe I should write more posts at this time of the morning? Okay, maybe not (especially as I've had to edit this to change 'snake' to 'snack' - maybe that site from a couple of days ago is affecting me?). Goodnight.

Been using Phoenix for most of today, and while I'm generally impressed, it has crashed twice; not something I was hoping for. These crashes occurred when clicking on links which opened new windows - the window would open, then the application would stop responding and Windows would then declare that the program has caused an illegal operation.

I haven't noticed any real speed increase, but its smaller system footprint is nice. It's just a shame that you have to reset all of your settings before installing it as a precaution.

In other Gecko news, Netscape have released Netscape 7.01. This finally includes a popup stopper (something Mozilla/Phoenix users have had for a while), and I hope that this will be a 'killer feature' that will encourage people to switch to it. Go on, ditch IE. You know you want to.

ZoneAlarm popped up this morning saying that an important update had been released and that I should update. So, I followed the link.

It turns out that while ZoneAlarm Plus and ZoneAlarm Pro have been updated, but the free version that I use hasn't. What's more, it's getting harder than ever to actually find the free version on the site, and you are bombarded with information about how much better the paid-for versions are (apparently the free version isn't designed for laptops, for example).

If I were ZoneLabs I'd play carefully. Sygate's free firewell is on a par with ZoneAlarm and if they're too pushy they're going to lose custom.

In the meantime I'm downloading Phoenix 0.5. The mouse seems to work fine, though only time will tell.

Actually, one last thing (well, two...) before I hit the stack. Phoenix 0.5 made it out of the door late on Saturday (darn me for not reading MozillaZine often enough), so I'll be installing that tomorrow, no doubt, along with testing the allegedly improved mouse scrolling I reported about earlier. This build is supposed to be the smallest and fastest to date, so hopefully the hype will match with the results.

Additionally, Mozilla 1.3 Alpha is due out sometime this week - a little later than the Friday date that I first reported, but not too far behind. MozillaZine has the juicy bits.

Okay, that's 6 posts today - a record? Anyway, I really am off to bed now. Bye,

My assumptions were right; we're not going out tonight. I think everyone is just too fragile. The 'plan' is to have a big night out on Wednesday, probably either in Leeds or at Gaudi's, seeing as it's £5 to get in and drink prices range from 20p to 50p.

I've spent most of the evening investigating a certain SEO and their clients; specifically one from York, of all places. The site has about 20 different domains, and operates under several different company names. They even have a forwarding mailbox in Maidenhead to attempt to hide their dodgyness.

I'm not going to name the companies involved for fear of getting sued for libel, and because of the ODP internal data policies, but I will say that this SEO is going to have a hard time getting their vanity domains listed on the ODP from now on.

Maybe when I get home I could post a notice on the door of the company about this? Nah, that'd be evil. Sweet revenge, though.

Anyway, time for bed. See you tomorrow.

(I should really stop these Lockergnome-esque post titles, shouldn't I?)

The most recent issue of Lockergnome Tech Specialist (which appears to be Saturday, even though it arrived today and isn't even published out on Saturdays) reports that Logitech, who make some of the world's best mice, have finally fixed the scrolling issues, to the extent that the option to enable MS Office-compatible scrolling has been removed. This is great news, since it annoys me when Mozilla or Phoenix suddenly scrolls to the bottom of the page instead of a few lines.

Don't get me wrong, Logitech make great mice - I've had 3 and they've all lasted much longer than cheaper unbranded mice. My current one, a Pilot Mouse Optical, is great on almost any surface, so I don't have to carry a mousemat with me everywhere. The software isn't that bad either. But this scrolling bug was really starting to annoy me.

I'm downloading the latest MouseWare drivers now (version 9.75) - I'll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, check out another interesting link from the same newsletter. Remember, you should never allow scales to build up inside your computer.

Is it just me, or does this image remind you of a certain Pokemon character?

(thanks to aladren for that)

The test was alright, actually - I managed to answer all of the questions and I think most of the answers I gave were correct. If you want to know what the test was about, it was Unix terminal commands (cd, ls, grep and so on), using Emacs, shell scripts and makefiles.

The likelihood of going out tonight seems somewhat slim - most people either have the mother of all hangovers from the pharmacy ball, a cold, or both. Ah well, more chance to catch up on sleep, I guess.

Last night was the Pharmacy Christmas Ball, which is basically an excuse for pharmacy students and their friends to dress up smart and get drunk in a posh location, in this case the Elland Road stadium, home of Leeds United. I didn't go, due to the cost of hiring a tuxedo and the £32 ticket price, but I did have chance to take a few photos of some of my friends who were going.

Anyway, it was suggested that we share the photos somehow, and today I had the bright idea of setting up a secret area of this site to put the photos up. I also intended to use Apache's Basic Authentification system so that I could put a password on the files. Except that I couldn't get it to work.

For some reason, it did not like my password file one bit. Whether that was because I wasn't specifying the path properly or what I don't know, but after a while I gave up and created a private group on MSN Groups, since that way other people can upload their photos without having to get me to do it.

Maybe I'll try again sometime later, but I have to start revising for a lab test soon, so I'd best do that. Unix commands. What fun.

Ugh... I'm #18 on Google for "male webcam webpage". Take 'nudity' out of the equation, and I'm the 15th result. Oh dear.

It's been over two months since it was first published, but I've noticed that I've been getting a few hits for the Hubzilla article, including a couple of search engine referrals. It turns out that CharisMac were another victim of Toho's oppresive regime against people using 'zilla' in product names, websites, and what-have-yous, and have had to change the name to the rather more boring FireWire Dino.

DaveZilla, perhaps the most famous of Toho's victims (and one who seems to be somewhat off the hook), provides the details. incidentally, I still want one. And I still don't have a FireWire card, or any FireWire devices, so it'd still be a pointless purchase. But hey, I'm a guy - I must have my frequent dosage of gadgets. Or else.

Richy mentioned Trillian in a blog entry about IMs today. Having not been to the Trillian site in yonks, I thought I'd check it out. Turns out a security patch was released 6 weeks ago that I still hadn't downloaded. Whoops...

Anyway, I have it now, and once I've come back from the shop, had a shower and all that, I'll check it out.

I'm in the process of modifying the individual archive pages to include a section with URLs that I've pinged in that article. Can't really see the point of it, other than the fact it seemed slightly cool.

The idea was inspired by a feature on Ain't Too Proud To Blog, but the Movable Type user manual tells you how to do it, so it's not like I'm copying, or anything. No, really...

The student cinema had Scooby Doo showing last night, and despite hearing reviews saying that it wasn't a particularly good film, I thought I'd check it out anyhow. And actually, it was worth the £2.75 price of the ticket.

Although some of the acting is a little ropey, Matthew Lillard is good at emulating Shaggy on the big screen. The effects are very good too - Scooby is animated particularly well, and they even managed to squeeze Scrappy Doo in there too, though I won't tell you what part he plays because it gives away a large portion of the plot.

The story is quite good and structured - clues to the final 'mystery' appear throughout the film so although the ending is a little unexpected it still makes sense - kinda like a real mystery :).

There are some genuinely funny moments, some reminiscent of Austin Powers (imagine Scooby as Shaggy's Minime and you'll get the idea), plus some that do leave you near the edge of your seat.

incidentally Scooby Doo 2 is due for release in the US in 2004, with pretty much the same cast as this one. It'll be interesting to see how it stacks up to the first one.

My dad rang me today to say that they've got a new car - a second-hand 02-registered silver Ford Focus. It has about 9000 miles on the clock, and seems to be in good condition.

The fact that the car is silver is a bit of a departure for my parents, considering the past 4 cars we've had (2x Ford Escorts, a Ford Sierra Saphire and most recently a Renault Mégane Scénic) have all been either red or burgundy colour. The main reason behind changing was the fact that the Renault was on its last legs - in fact it only just made it to the garage before the engine started to overheat. It was due to be replaced in January anyway - we've had it 5 years and only had a couple of very minor problems with it - but the fact that repairing its problems could be in the region of £1000 meant there was little point in holding onto it much longer.

There were two main problems: the heater in the car no longer worked (so it was absolutely freezing in there), and the radiator kept over-heating. Strange how the two problems were complete opposites, but hey, there you go. We were given £3000 for it; not bad for a 5-year-old that needs a grand's worth of work on it.

The new car will be ready on Tuesday; in the meantime my parents are making use of public transport, and are actually quite complementary of the service. Which is good - until recently my dad wad always complaining about the lack of reliability and stupid routes the buses take.

I'll let you know what the car is like when my parents come to pick me up next Saturday. Yup, this time next week, I'll be back home, at the start of a month-long Christmas break :).

I've finally got around to uploading an image gallery containing pictures of me and my ugly mug. There's only 4 photos in it so far, but I guess more will be added in due course.

I'm not using any special software to make it, just plain old HTML and IrfanView to create the thumbnails. Comments and thoughts are appreciated.

Not done much today. The first lecture was very quiet - only about 15% attendance. This is partly to do with Eid, but also with a rumour that it was cancelled, which it evidently wasn't. Actually, having only a handful of people there was quite nice because there were less interruptions and the environment was less intimidating. And, because it was the last lecture for that module this semester, we got free choccies at the end :).

Spent the afternoon playing on Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's not something I've done in a long while, so it was a nice change. It was also refreshing to see that the web site had finally been updated for once, complete with oodles of player guides and the re-instatement of the ride exchange, though I think it has more to do with the release of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. Most reviews of it that I've seen have been generally favourable, averaging out at about 80-85%, but they all conclude that the game is incredibly similar to the first one, despite all 500,000 lines of code being completely rewritten by the author, Chris Sawyer. It looks good though; I may consider it sometime after Christmas when the price comes down.

As for progress, please don't laugh when I say I've just completed Leafy Lake - my progress on my parents computer is much further. There, I've all but completed the original set and am half-way through the second set of added scenarios (the Added Attractions pack, or Corkscrew Follies if you live in the US).

I've been a fan of Sawyer's tycoon series, having played Transport Tycoon many times. It's still possible to buy the Windows version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, for about £5 - Chris has links to it on his site.

I've spent the past hour or so trying to find something interesting to link to, and to be honest, I've failed miserably. Today hasn't been that interesting - I spent most of my time reading copies of the Guardian that I never got around to reading. Although I was intending to go to the Computing Society launch night tonight I decided I was too tired (I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open even now, and it's not even 11pm yet), and bearing in mind that I have to be up sharpish tomorrow some sleep be a good idea.

You may notice that I've changed the way archives are displayed on the sidebar; each month now shows how many entries are in it and links are now provided to the category archives. I'll add these to the rest of the pages once I can get a successful rebuild - unfortunately it's been timing out when building the individual archives recently. I don't know whether it's the server or MT itself - probably the server because it's fine in the morning when the net is generally quieter - but either way it's annoying.

Tomorrow is the 1st anniversary of me joining the SETI@Home project, and in that time, I've completed 125 units (the 100th unit was completed on October 14th). It also means that yesterday was the first amnniversary of my parents getting broadband internet (oh how I wish I had access to that here) and just over a month to go before the first anniversary of this weblog (assuming that the old weblog is still a part of it).

Shortly afterwards, it'll be the sixth month anniversary of this blog design (first introduced back on August 6th). Okay, so it's been heavily tweaked since then (mostly due to the move to Movable Type) but the general design itself hasn't changed much. It's certainly the longest lasting blog design; while it's not perfect, I currently see no reason to change it, since I can't really think of anything much better.

Anyway - sleep. I was intending to go to Leeds again but only a handful of my closer friends are going so it probably wouldn't be such a good night. And it'd be expensive. And there's the Computing Society party tomorrow which I have to go to. Yes, there's now a society for computing students, and yes, I have done a website for them (I'm in charge of PR) - I'll link to it once it's ready for primetime.

These guys impress me. Mozilla 1.3 alpha, with its junk mail filter, is due for release on Friday, only 4 days (!) after 1.2.1 final was released. Talk about keeping us on our feet. More info à la MozillaZine.

I've managed to burn one of the fingers on my right hand, while trying to rescue a burnt and smouldering pizza from the oven without really thinking about it. This, of course, has to be the finger I use for clicking the mouse, and the main one I use for typing. So I'm in a bit of a pickle since it hurts so much. Arrrrgh!

I'm tempted to strap an ice cube to it to numb the pain. However, I don't have any ice cubes and it will probably melt all over the keyboard or something. Bleurgh.

Okay, Mozilla 1.2.1 is now installed, complete with the DHTML bug fix. I opted for a clean-ish install - in the past I've just installed over whatever version was there previously. Since this included alphas and betas, with hindsight this probably was not a good idea, so I uninstalled 1.2 before installing 1.2.1. I'm now downloading my favourite Orbit 3+1 theme, along with the Orbit Retro theme, which I haven't used yet. Some would argue these are the only good Mozilla themes - I'm afraid I'd probably agree too.

Other than the bug fix not much is different. The installer still isn't very friendly with ZoneAlarm, and I eventually had to reboot; the installer had stopped responding and absoultely refused to be removed from memory, even when using End Process Tree in Task Manager. Bleh.

Since Kim enquired in the previous post's comments, I'll tell her now that Phoenix doesn't have as many options to play with (they haven't been added to the UI) and you don't get as many add-ons from MozDev.org as Mozilla users do. And you don't have a mail client, chat client, address book or web page composer either. But you do get an improved popup blocker and the extra speed.

...being third on Google for "large blow up penguin".

Wahey - entry #150 already :).

Last night I invited my all-time best mate Tom over from home. He's currently living in Manchester, and I went to visit him back in September, so it was his turn to visit me. We had a good night - we started at Omar's Balti House for a curry, before heading on to Livingstones. I have to say it was one of the best nights I've had for some time, even if we hardly danced at all. I did drink rather a lot of alcohol (6 bottles), though I only reached tipsyness and feel fine this morning. Certainly I was less drunk than Tom or Anthony, my next door neighbour who also came along.

And being the usual gadgetty person he is, he brought his Sony Cybershot digital camera with him, so here's one of the better photos from last night. Strangely enough I have very few photos of the two of us, so it's nice to finally get one. Click on it to see it full size.

XP also impressed me last night, by recognising the Sony Memory Stick almost as soon as it was plugged in, and provided native support for it. It even assigned a drive letter to it. Quite cool, really.

Alright, who forgot to set his alarm clock last night? I now have 45 minutes to get a shower, get changed, get breakfast and head of for lectures. Help me!!!

Although it'll be at least September next year before I move into a house, I really want one of these to go in it :).

I was bored, so I randomly typed in a domain name to see if a site existed there. This is what I got:

The domain name icantbearsed.com has been registered by NetNames for one of our clients.

Ah well. No-one appears to have registered blatentlyrandom.com, which is what I was considering renaming this blog to ('blatently' and 'random' are two words I overuse heavily), but I decided to stick with Neil's World. It's boring, but hey, so am I.

As well as being the first day of advent, and the day when parents finally come to terms with the fact that Christmas really is coming and there's nothing they can do about it, it is also World AIDS day, and so I feel it is only right to Link and Think.

Although I am, to the best of my knowledge, HIV Negative, and do not know anyone who has admitted to being HIV Positive, I imagine that to find out you have the HIV virus must be devastating. The fact that there is no real cure, the fact that you know you will die a slow, painful and premature death should the disease take hold, the fact that you can't have intimate content with others without protection - to have to face that must be terrible.

While sadly this can't be said about countries in the third world, it is probably fair to say that in the western world AIDS can be stopped, or at least marginilaised, if people were more responsible and didn't get into situations where HIV can be transmitted.

Millions of people die from AIDS every year worldwide. This shouldn't happen. Please, think.

www.worldaidsday.org

Woohoo! It's December the 1st - the start of advent. Now I can finally open the first window on my advent calendar - I put it up on Monday and have been staring at it all week, trying not to succumb to temptation. I managed it though. And I'm immensely proud at myself for it :).

So... 24 days to Christmas :)