The advertising banner that appears at the bottom of the MSN Messenger window doesn't usually attract my attention, but on this occasion I had to giggle when I saw this:
My computer is a Toshiba Satellite Pro A10 laptop, and it cost £650. So MSN is trying to sell me something I already have for £250 more!
On the plus side, it probably means that the Messenger client isn't sending details about my computer to MSN. If it did, then it might have chosen a more suitable advert.
After reading Jesse Ruderman's Burning Edge FAQ, which explains what the various acronyms used to describe custom builds of Firefox are, I decided to have a look at one of these custom builds.
First thing to do was to find out what my processor could handle. I have a Mobile Intel Celeron, which could be based on either a Pentium 2, 3 or 4, so I needed to do a bit of further investigation. For this, I used AIDA 32, which reported that the chip supported SSE2, a set of instructions that was introduced with the Pentium 4 - therefore, I have a P4-based Celeron. This means I can download builds marked as SSE2, which requires a P4, and builds marked as G7, which doesn't require a P4 but is optimised for it.
The build I went for was mmoy's O2 G7 SSE2, which is based on trunk code from Thursday. It's about the same size as Firefox 0.8 but doesn't have a formal installer, just an SFX unpacker, but it does include many of the new features that will go into version 0.9 (a list of the big changes is also available from The Burning Edge). The only other difference between this and the 0.8 release is that this includes alternative artwork - the Firefox logos are trademarked so they only appear in the official releases and nightly builds.
Still with me? Good, because if you follow the above you may make yourself very, very happy. This optimised build is insanely fast - probably the fastest browser I've ever used. New tabs open instantly, menus appear as soon as you click on them, and page rendering is noticably faster. If you're willing to spend a few minutes trying to find a build that works best with your computer, then you'll be thanking yourself in future.
Hope you enjoy that extra day we have to stick in every 4 years so that the seasons remain in order :) . No special plans, although I've spent almost half of it asleep now since I only just got up. And then when messing around with Real Alternative I realised I'd missed out on this week's Radio 4 comedy shows, so that was another hour wasted.
Thanks for the comments about the re-design, I'm glad to hear that all of you who have commented like it :D .
After making a few final alterations to the design, I decided to go ahead and implement it. Currently only 3 pages - the main index, archives and advanced search page - have the new look; the others still have the old appearance for the time being. I really like the new design - I'm particularly proud of the menu mouseovers, which I picked up from the Taming Lists article on A List Apart. When it comes to working with lists, that page is my bible.
The great thing about this new design is that it requires barely any changes to the existing markup - literally an extra <div> tag to envelope the page content and new code for the menu, and, err... that's it. All the other changes are in the stylesheet. This is one reason why I like purely-CSS based designs so much.
Update: The menu now works as it should in IE - I think the problem was something to do with attribute inheritance. I still think the page looks marginally better in Firefox (et al) but the differences are miniscule.
I've been having a brief email conversation with the owner of SERPs, a website about a competition orginating from the alt.internet.search-engines newsgroup on Usenet. The site looks innocent enough, but it turns out the URL got onto Mark Carey's Blog Spam Database after the owner made what he claims was an on-topic post to one of Mark Carey's entries. A quick Google search over Mark's site would suggest this was the case as I came across a couple of entries where posting this URL would have perhaps been appropriate.
I've removed the URL and its .com variant as a result, but it underlines the major problem with blacklists - if an innocent domain gets caught in the crossfire it can make things really difficult. Ask any email publisher what they think about email blacklists like SpamCop and you'll probably get a general thumbs-down, since legitimate sites can get into the blacklist far too easily.
It's therefore perhaps best to double-check what you're importing. If I remember correctly Jay Allen does have some method of checking sites first, so the master blacklist should still be alright, but you may like to think twice before importing other people's lists.
There was no Friday Five this week, so I'm following Richard's example and doing an alternative one. And yes, I know it's Saturday, but I think was already down the pub last night when Richard posted it so I didn't actually pick it up in my aggregator until this morning. Anyway...
Not too bad. If I try then my writing is usually very legible, though I do have problems with the letters s and z at times. If I'm writing quickly I end up producing some random scrawl that even I have trouble understanding. Personally, I prefer to type things out since I can type quicker than I can write.
I seem to remember seeing the coffin of my late great uncle, whose body would have been in there at the time, but other than that, no, I haven't seen a dead body. Unless you count passed out students, though technically they're not dead, just intoxicated.
Have you ever been to Bradford? Anyone who goes around naked here will die of pneumonia almost instantly. Besides, my generally hairy body is not a particularly attractive sight.
While I like plain old margherita, I'm also a big fan of pepperoni and proscuito, the latter containing Parma ham which is divine.
Someone who was interesting to talk to.
Last week I was moaning that IE simply wouldn't display a design correctly, no matter what I tried. You'll be pleased to know, however, that after starting again and taking a different approach, I was able to get it working, and the new design actually looks quite good. Please take a look at it and then tell me what you think.
I may make the top image a little shorter in height, and try to make the Search box take up a little less space in IE, but other than that I'll start transitioning the site to this design soon.
Remember that brown furry monster that features in that image that everyone forwards about kittens and masturbation? Well, how about creating your own?
As you can see, here's one I made earlier, using a cut-out from Anti-method. If you try it yourself, make sure you use card and glue, not inkjet paper and cellotape. Trust me. Everytime you make a Domo-kun out of inkjet paper and cellotape, God kills a... yeah, you get the idea.
Still, a real Domo-kun would be cool. You don't get the furriness with inkjet paper.
Anil Dash, veteran weblogger and Six Apart Vice President, linked to my Pinging Service rundown article on his Daily links weblog. Which is cool because I've had a steady stream of comments and trackbacks since then. I'll let you know later in the week how this affected traffic, which has been back to normal (around 80MB/day) lately.
Certainly it was a nice pickup for what has been a generally uneventful day where I managed to go shopping without my shopping list and promptly forget the three things I deliberately went to get. On the other hand, this bag of Smarties cookies is really nice :).
Inspired by Ben:
You're The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
by C.S. Lewis
You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust in zoo animals.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.
Interesting. Though Ben got Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the late great Douglas Adams, which is probably my favourite book.
I'm working on a cool new feature for the site. It's not ready for primetime yet, so i won't tell you what it is until it's finished, but the more eagle-eyed of you may be able to guess as there are a few clues lying around.
This is getting ridiculous. I got yet another email from someone who thought my example camping company site was real, so I went to do some investigation. (read about the first time)
Turns out that it's the first result for 'orange tents' and 'purple tents' on Google, and the second result for 'green tents'. Oh dear. Oh dear oh deary me.
About 18 months ago, during my first week at Bradford, one of the events was a hypnotist from Canada called Tony Lee (doesn't seem to have a web site, but check Google anyway). The show was really good - my next-door neighbour at the time ended up being one of those hypnotised, which added to the fun. This was a Thursday night, and we had over 200 people turn up.
Anyhow, the union made the wise decision of booking the guy again (since he didn't do welcome week this time), and tonight he was supposed to be performing. I paid my £4 entry price, and went to take my seat, to find... well... no-one. Other than Tony himself and a those that were doing the sound and light.
As time went on, about 30 people turned up. And that was it. So, the show was cancelled (because the act required 20 people on stage), money was returned and everyone, including Tony, went off to the Biko bar where there was an free acoustic jam that was somewhat more popular. But why?
Firstly, Bradford is a curiousity in that no matter what the union tries, barely anyone will turn up to events on Saturday nights, with the possible exception to the Acoustic Jam and Comedy nights which operated on alternate nights in the Biko bar. This is at least the fourth event that has flopped on Saturdays this year. Then there was the ticket problem. £3 advance tickets were supposed to be available at least a week before the event. They weren't. Then the posters, which had to be modified last week when Ents realised that the world 'Hypnotist' was only in small lettering. Three different start times were given, all an hour apart.
On the plus side, the guy will almost certainly be rebooked, and he's been here a few times over the years so he knows this is an anomaly, but it will be a very embarassing - and expensive - mistake for the union.
Found on BlogDex:
You are Woodstock!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
It's been a while since I last took part in the Friday Five - lately there have either been no questions or I've not felt like answering them. But today's is alright, so...
I went to have an annual asthma checkup with a nurse back in December, but the last time I actually saw a doctor was quite some time ago.
September.
I don't drive. But I'm sure my parents fill up with petrol on a regular basis.
Sometime in 2002.
This one has never been backed up... the last one was backed up over Easter last year. Yes, I know...
It' been 10 days (!) since I last posted a poll, so here goes:
Conformity - You are the Tomato
All-around and average, but not upset about it, you take life day by day and try to live with as little stress as possible. Some people like you for what you are, but there are a few who would rather see you sliced and diced.. but we all have enemies, right?
Probably about right.
As you may now know, Yahoo Search now serves up results from its own technology, instead of using Google. Apparently it's mostly based on Inktomi but also combines bits from Overture, Altavista and Fast, all of which are now owned by Yahoo. It even includes page caching, in a similar way to Google.
But one feature that puts it above Google is that if a search result has an RSS feed attached to it, the feed is also linked, with an option to add it to My Yahoo. Here's a screenshot to demonstrate:
(The search was for "Neil Turner" - the home page is the second result after my templates page)
It's undoutedbly a cool feature, and sets a precedent for Google. As we know, Google favours Atom so it'll be interesting to see whether Atom feeds become highlighted in a similar way. Thanks to LG RSS Portal and The Shifted Librarian for this.
Update: I didn't realise this at first, but you can actually filter results so that only those sites with RSS feeds are shown, making it a bit like Feedster or Technorati. Very cool. Google certainly doesn't do that.
Traffic is back to reasonably normal levels now after the peak last week. You can see how many more people came in this graph:
Statistics for yesterday aren't ready yet, which is a pity because it would be nice to see how many people came over from MacSurfer this time. What I do know is that I've used up nearly 2GB of bandwidth already this month.
In other statistics news, I now have not far off 1300 entries in my MT Blacklist. You can now view it too - it's called blacklist.txt and is located at the root of this domain (in the past I couldn't get it to publish but it turned out I'd made a typo in the server path). I'm deliberately not linking to it directly though.
At least there's one good thing that's happened today - I'm on Macsurfer :). One member of the whiny Mac Mafia has already made their way across, let's see how many more completely miss the point and make idiots of themselves ;).
So not only is my life a mess, and IE sucks, but the host behind Scrapie has ballsed something up. Again. For the third darn time in only 2 weeks.
Currently the site is showing a backup sometime before Sunday afternoon, since the changes I made haven't filtered through. The forum doesn't work at all, and the FTP server is timing out.
Actually, correction: the web site is timing out too now.
Apparently we've had no problems with the site in several years, until recently, but I really have lost just about all of my patience with the hosting company in question. Although I deliberately added backup scripts so that I had copies of all of the articles, since I can't get into the FTP server I can't save the CMS as yet, so we'll have to wait until they've sorted themselves out first. But this is another problem I didn't need.
IE has pissed me off again with the joke that its developers pass off as CSS support. I'm working towards a new look for the site that isn't based on BlueFade, which has been in use on here in some shape or form for the best part of the past 9 months. It looks nice but I want to move onto brighter (literally) things.
The next design uses what I believe is the box model, and basically simulates having a centred <table> element. Now, I know IE can be fussy with the box model, but I used the same principle for Scrapie and that seems to work okay. With this site, however, IE was having none of it.
Everything was fine when I was working in 'testbed' mode, using just the one exported entry. But as soon as I linked it in with the CMS and added 15 entries, the sidebar disappeared off the bottom of the page. And no amount of adjustments that I could make would get it back. And believe me, I've spent well over an hour using code from various sources to get the damn thing working.
As it is, I've given up for now, but if any of you are handy with CSS please take a look at this page and tell me what I'm doing wrong. For the curious, yes, that is a prototype of the forthcoming design - I was hoping to keep it a secret but IE has decided to work against me on that front and short of doing a Ben Goodger I'm going to need help here.
And naturally, the page has been working fine in Firefox all along.
Life's being a bit of a bitch at the moment. I've got 3 courseworks on the go, with another one on the horizon and a lab test on UML diagrams on the cards too, along with an ongoing group software development project which really isn't going anywhere at the moment. And on the personal side of life, things aren't going too well either, but this is a public weblog so I won't go into that. Sadly I'm running out of people to talk to about personal issues so if you see me around the university counselling service you'll know why.
And there's still over 4 weeks until Easter... :(
Over the past couple of days, there's been a couple of articles on the web criticising Apple's iTunes. Yesterday, I linked to ExtremeTech's article about why WMA is a good audio format (and why iTunes should support it) and today Jason Snell at MacWorld posted an editorial weblog entry about the lack of innovation in recent iTunes versions (thanks to Breaking Windows for the second link).
I think Apple could silence many of their critics with just one new feature: plugins. Winamp has them. Windows Media Player has them. And most other media players let you add extra formats via codecs. With a good plugin architecture, third-party developers could add extra formats, and bring extra audio formats to the program. The second is important because in not being able to play Ogg Vorbis, and especially WMA, iTunes is marginalising itself in the PC arena. If iTunes could play WMA then you could play all those files that the iTunes Music Store doesn't sell but are available elsewhere (and perhaps available cheaper too, although that perhaps underlines why Apple hasn't added WMA support).
But "hey!", you're thinking, "QuickTime can already accept additional audio formats". Yes, it can. But the fact that there's no widely available additional codecs for it probably means that Apple has either made it too difficult to develop codecs that integrate with QT or is reluctant to encourage people to create extensions in this way.
Winamp can now play almost every audio format under the sun thanks to an open plugin architecture that allows additional codecs to integrate seamlessly with the application. If iTunes could do the same then I'm sure more people would switch, perhaps myself included. In the meantime, I'm sticking to dBpowerAMP which can already play a long list of formats, Ogg and WMA included.
Asa has a very thorough roundup of what the bloggers are saying about Firefox - 45 in total, all with positive reviews of the browser.
Ben Goodger has also made his weblog block IE - IE users are redirected to a page encouraging them to upgrade. While I agree with the idea in principle, it makes viewing the page in FeedDemon somewhat difficult because that uses IE's rendering engine. He's also fixed his RSS feed so that the permalinks actually point to something now. Ben Goodger is one of the lead developers of Firefox, by the way.
Meanwhile, it appears I have another convert for Firefox - one of my friends got tired of IE and is now using that. She particularly likes the Firesomething extension, which, by the way, today I are be mostly using Mozilla Powersheep.
Couldn't think of anything interesting to post today (it's been such a slow news day that movabletype.org got into the BlogDex top 50 for no real reason), other than this monster of a spam message. Here's what SpamAssassin had to say about it:
Someone out there has a sense of humour, since there's now an extension for Mozilla Firefox called Firesomething which chooses a random name for the browser every time you launch it or open a new window. So far I've had 'Fireworm', 'Spacelizard' and 'Moonpanda', and Asa, whom I found this through, has had 'Powergoat'.
You can also configure the names too, if you like - you could even called it Internet Explorer... (shudder)
Ever looked at a site and thought "I know that guy"? I did, when looking at Spherical Bowl a few weeks back. Turns out it's by James, one of the current sabbaticals at the student union. Of course, it wasn't until I approved James' request to join the University of Bradford group on Orkut that I twigged it was him. So James, if you're reading this, I'll probably see you down the FND tonight.
Got my first flood attack today - 31 comments posted to the previous entry. It would've been more, but MT managed to throttle some of them since quite a few were from the same IP address. The bulk, however, used different IPs so the comment throttling wasn't so useful in that sense. All the messages said "WINDOWS SUX HAHAHAHA LOL" followed by random gibberish. The names, email addresses and URLs were all randomly chosen too. From what I gather, it's typical of an attack using the FloodMT Python script.
Anyway, since I have MT-Blacklist installed cleaning up afterwards was pretty quick. But it's made me likely to introduce comment registration when Movable Type 3.0 comes out, or something on those lines.
You may know by now that some of the source code for Windows 2000 (and possibly also NT 4.0) has been leaked onto the internet. Only about a third of the code has been leaked, but that's still a considerable 13.5 million lines.
I first heard this through one of my pals at Xteq, and there's been an email discussion going on as to whether this was really a conspiracy. Could Microsoft have deliberately leaked the code to make Windows 2000 and NT seem more vunerable to security attacks so that people will upgrade to XP and Windows Server 2003?
The Betanews article suggests this isn't the case, although you'd naturally expect a Microsoft spokesperson to deny the leak was deliberate. You also have to remember the XP and Server 2003 are both based on the same NT codebase as 2000 and NT - unless MS was very selective about the code it chose to leak, it makes users of the two more recent OSes vunerable too, so I'd say it was unlikely.
What it does mean is that there may well be more pressure on Microsoft to fix security vunerabilities in a faster timeframe, seeing as the source code may well be out there for all to see so viruses and worms which exploit vunerabilities will be much easier to create. It also means that more third parties can scrutinise the code and find exploits, as well as potential bugs, as is usual in the open source world.
Should users be worried? I don't know, since no-one is quite sure what got leaked, although Betanews suggests it includes the IE5 and Windows 2000 logos and code to display the taskbar, and other bits are likely. It apparently doesn't include the code for Product Activation, but that was never included in these two OSes anyway.
Update:The source of the leak has been found - a company called MainSoft, who uses the source code to create native-Unix versions of Windows programs. You can read the original article at NeoWin, and Microsoft's official response.
Just when I thought I'd found a way to enable to Power Users group on XP Home, I get this:
Oh well... worth a try. For more see Scott's XP Home secrets which tells you how to do various things in XP Home that can normally only be done in Pro.
I've already had someone rip the piss out of me over at Orkut. If you can log in, take a look at this discussion, but here is the post anyway:
neil is more a total cliche than a "luzer."
a white, lefty liberal, who doesn't believe in god, and likes goofy/slapstick humor. and SHOCKING, SURPRISE here:
also, dresses casual contemporary!!
SEE YOU AT THE DAVE MATTHEWS CONCERT, AFTER YOUR SHOPPING DATE AT ABERCROMBIE.
(it's probably against the Orkut ToS to do that, but, heh)
Congratulations, you're able to read my profile. Just because I'm perhaps not the most interesting person out there doesn't mean you have to attract attention to yourself by making me look stupid.
Here's a photo of my new-ish computer (since I got it 3 1/2 months ago now). I'm really posting this for another reason but thought you might be interested anyway.
And yes, that is a condom mousemat - I got it free from somewhere. Though not with a purchase of condoms.
By the way, traffic for yesterday was again over the 200MB mark - in fact it was only 2MB less than Monday. Total for this month is in the region of 1100MB, 91% of which were 'human visitors', ie not robots or crawlers. I'm allowed 350MB/day before my host starts getting concerned, but that still means I'm at 57% capacity...
As you may well be aware by now, the next version of IE, 6.01, will include a pop-up blocker, and this will be included as part of the fortcoming second service pack for Windows XP. Popups really have become one of the scourges of the internet - after junk email they are probably one of the most annoying things out there, so it's good that Microsoft have finally decided to do something about them.
While it's not as high quality as Ryan's, here's an aerial photo of my halls of residence.
You can also see our sports centre and some of the lecture theatres and labs that I use in that photo.
One of the new features of Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 is 'multiple identities'. It allows you to associate more than one email address with an account, so that you can use one set of settings, but send and reply to email using more than one email address.
This is useful for me, since any mail I get through the magazine web site is forwarded to my university email address. This is fine, except any replies I send will use my university address and not the magazine address. With multiple identities, I can select to use the magazine address or my university address from the dropdown menu which you would usually use for selecting mail accounts.
Unfortunately, there isn't a dialog in the Thunderbird interface that lets you do this (at least not yet), but there is an official guide. I got it working but it took a bit of trial and error, though I imagine a future Thunderbird release will probably have a UI for this which would make things much easier.
Thanks to Henrik Gemal for finding this.
Mike Pinkerton, the lead developer of Camino, the native Mac browser based on the Gecko engine, has a post about the performance comparisons used on the page for Safari. As you'd expect, the statistics show that Safari is noticably faster than the competition, which includes IE for Mac, Netscape and Camino.
What is interesting is the choice of versions for Netscape and Camino. Although the statistics were altered to co-incide with the release of Safari 1.2, it still refers to Netscape 7.0.2, which has been updated to 7.1 and apparently includes some performance enhancements. Camino 0.8, which is due out around the same time as Mozilla 1.7, should also reap the benefits of some tweaks to the Gecko engine which have made both classic Mozilla and Firefox somewhat faster.
The fact that neither Mozilla or Firefox (which under its Firebird guise has been available for the Mac for some time now) is included also seems to suggest that Apple are being deliberately selective about their statistics to make the browser look better than it is. From what I have heard, having read a few blog entries and comments about Firefox, it looks like the small red panda could give Safari some real competition, particularly now that it has the new OS X-friendly interface.
Eeek... yesterday I had well over 200MB of transfer in one day. Seems like the FireFox screenshots page is quite popular at present, since that's the main source of the traffic spike - I've had nearly 650 referrals from this page with Firefox OS X screenshots already so far. I'm now quite glad I moved to a host with a greater bandwidth allocation as before Christmas that would have been 10% of my monthly quota gone in a day.
Talking of hosts, you can now look at two girls in a bath full of mashed potato. The hosting company for that site decided to rename the main folder on the web server, thus preventing our site from working. This is the same hosting company that decided to reset our password last week without telling us. As you can imagine, I'm not best pleased with them, and spent the morning doctoring one of the CMS scripts so that I could use it to export all entries in the event of something like this happening again. I am seriously considering looking into moving the site elsewhere but right now it's more stress that I don't need.
If you're interested, here's a handful of screenshots showing what's new in FireFox 0.8. These are collected on one of the cluster machines at the university rather than my own machine since I haven't yet had chance to download it.
Update: I now have this running on my laptop, downloaded from Oregon State University's FTP server. It's going to take some getting used to the new name, but I really like the new logo and About window, and the browser feels much more complete now and less like a 'technology preview'. The only other problem I have is that I need to re-install my extensions, since I used Mozilla Backup to do a partial reset of my profile, and naturally every Mozilla-related site is at a crawl today.
Update II: If you still can't download it, try the UK mirror service which now has the file. I've also added the Firefox button to the home page.
So, today's the big day - Thunderbird reaches version 0.5, and FireFox 0.8 finally makes the light of day. And before you look totally befuddled, the browser originally known as Phoenix, then as Firebird, then as Mozilla Firebird, is now (Mozilla) Firefox, and it's now a registered trademark. It also comes with a rather dandy new icon, which unsurprisingly features a fox.
You can read the press release for more information, plus all manner of blog entries which I don't have time to link. But in any case, you may want to download the latest version if you haven't done so already.
I've seen a couple of sites with hints to speed up Adobe Reader (aka version 6.0/6.0.1 of the Adobe Acrobat Reader software). I saw it first a few months ago on Henrik Gemal's blog, and then again on Darrel Norton's Blog. They both recommend roughly the same thing, but in different ways, and I've found a combination of the two is best.
What you need to do is open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\plug_ins (the folder may differ slightly if you installed Adobe Reader to another location). Under that folder is a subfolder called 'plug_ins'. Open that.
Now, here's where the tips differ, and I'm going with Henrik here. Move all of the files and subfolders, except EWH32.api and Search.api, to the 'Optional' subfolder, which should be just above the 'plug_ins' folder in the hierarchy. If you read ebooks you may need to keep eBook.api and DigSig.api in the plug_ins folder as well.
Why this works - all of the files in plug_ins are loaded into memory on startup. But for the vast majority of PDF files out there, you don't need them, so they're only lengthening initialisation time and wasting your memory. On my system, which is a relatively typical machine, doing this saved at least 5 seconds off loadup time for the program, and I got similar savings on two other desktop machines today. This will vary, however - in some cases the improvement will be somewhat less since Adobe offers a full and 'lite' version of the software, the latter being recommended for dial-up users, which includes fewer plugins.
As far as I am aware, putting the files in the Optional folder means that they are loaded only if they are needed, instead of all the time. You might get a little more milage by putting all the plugins into that folder but I haven't tried it and I don't imagine it'll make that much difference in any case.
I have also heard that version 6.0.1 of the software is noticably faster than the original 6.0, but I can't confirm this myself.
It's a pity Adobe didn't design the Reader application so that only loaded these plugins when necessary, as it would make the program a lot more usable. I think one of the reasons why the program is somewhat less than popular is due to its long startup times so this would improve its image among web users.
Update: If all that is far too complicated, download Adobe Reader Speedup which will automate the process for you. Found via LG Windows Daily.
You probably know by now that I do like to preach about the benefits of up-to-date, well-patched, secure computer systems and why everyone should be aware of security. So, I'm naturally pleased that TechTV has written an article detailing 10 easy steps for a more secure system. It also offers a good tip about getting a separate credit card solely for online purchases (perhaps with a lower credit limit) and not using a debit card. Admittedly I do use my Switch card for online purchases, but most of the places that take it are reputable British companies anyway, since Switch isn't an international system.
On the same subject - UK people, use a credit card when buying stuff anywhere (online or offline) that costs more than £100. Credit card companies are jointly liable for purchases over £100, so if threatening court action against the seller gets you nowhere, you can sue your credit card company too. Usually companies will take notice if they have Barclaycard after them as opposed to Mrs Miggins from Tunbridge Wells.
Inspired by Daisy, here's a map showing the counties in Great Britian that I've visited:
I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001. |
So I'm quite well-travelled, although I haven't reached the more isolated bits as yet. But hey, I'm only 19.
I think I may have fixed the bug users who wanted their details remembered in the comments form. The default code that comes with MT would only save your details for the current folder, which, if you are using MT's default method of putting all files in one folde, is no problem. But I'm not now - a new folder is created for each day of posts. As such, the cookie is only any use for that day's posts - post a comment on another day and the cookie is not retrieved.
Anyway, I'd noticed that Les didn't have this problem, so I checked out his code. Indeed, he had made some subtle changes which allowed the cookie to be set for the whole domain, so I've copied the code in the hope that it'll fix the problem here.
It's not every day that you get to take photos of two girls in a bath filled with mashed potato.
Honestly. Students these days...
It looks like the password was not the only thing to change on the server (which I'm back into now) - some of the folders got moved around a bit, which messed up some of the PHP scripts which use absolute paths.
It also meant that our password protected folders weren't working, resulting in ugly 500 errors. Fortunately, I was able to recreate the password files using the .htaccess file wizard, and so with a bit of luck the site will work now. And if it doesn't, I've added custom error documents so we'll get a nice 500 error instead of an ugly one.
Normally I'm not too critical of the university's IT policies, since in the vast majority of cases software is kept up to date and computers are upgraded on a regular basis. But when it comes to the main machine we use at the magazine, I'll have to take exception, although it's probably because the computer is behind a locked door and Learning Support Services don't know how to get in to update it.
This computer was... wait for it... at least two and a half years behind on critical updates. It was on Windows 2000 SP2, and so it had a whole raft of potential security flaws that weren't fixed. As you can imagine, I spent part of the afternoon getting the system into better shape, and all updates bar Windows Media Player 9 have been installed.
Update: Office 2000 also got a kick in the balls - I upgraded that from SP1 to SP3. The other machine in the office is in a better state - it was rebuilt on the software side quite recently and also has had Automatic Updates turned on so it tends to keep itself happy.
Another crisis came up with regards to the magazine, or rather its website. The FTP password for the website was reset earlier in the week, and naturally the hosts did not tell us what the new password was. Fortunately, a kind bloke called Alistair at the hosting company offered to reset it to a phrase of our choice, so all should be well tomorrow, so I can sleep tonight.
Maybe it's just too early in the morning, but this error message befuddled me somewhat:
The program is Rational Rose, a tool for creating UML class diagrams, which I'm supposed to be using in the lab right now.
Phil has unleashed a trackback hack that only allows you to ping an entry once with a particular URL. This has the advantage of stopping multiple trackback pings, and potentially alleviating crapflooders. I've applied it here.
He also has another hack, which fetches the URL that is being pinged and looks to see if there's any trackback RDF data in it. If so, the ping is let through, otherwise it's blocked - therefore you would only be able to ping something if you accepted pings yourself. I didn't apply that because I'm a little bit more open and because it would mean a greater risk of trackback timeouts, which, by the way, you can help to prevent by reading my Stopping Trackback Timeouts at the both ends article.
Stephen Riha also has a more elaborate hack - if a duplicate ping is received, it examines the excerpt, and if it is different, the existing ping is updated; otherwise it is discarded. I decided not to go with that one as I don't think I'd find it necessary. But it's there if you want to use it.
Currently watching a documentary on BBC1 about violence related to excessive alcohol consumption in Cardiff. It's quite shocking, but this amused me:
The police then had to pursue a man involved in the fight who was wearing a Superman costume.
Then later, from a police officer:
We got hold of The Incredible Hulk, when Superman literally jumped out of a telephone box.
Never underestimate the TV value of a drunken brawl involving people on a stag night. It does underline a point about Brits and their alcohol problems, though - at least 50% of domestic violence here is linked to alcohol.
Update: Another good quote from the narrator:
The man will be questioned at the police station once he has sobered up. This may take some time.
The second beta of FeedDemon 1.10 is out, bringing a whole variety of fixes to bugs that annoyed me in the first release. If you're a registered customer, you may like to upgrade now as it seems to be working pretty well now - the only bug I've found so far is with regards to Blogger-generated Atom feeds.
Thanks, by the way, to everyone who posted their Atom feeds. They seem to work fine in this beta :).
Remember this example site that I did for one of my coursework assignments? Well, it looks like it got into Google because someone from Indonesia used the contact form to order 6x 6-8 person tents.
I wonder if I'll get my own Snopes article next... :)
Yay for IBM for writing non-futureproof software.
I wanted to download a Java application from IBM's web site, just to try it out and see if it was of any use to me. After filling out a registration form where I was required to say where I work (as such, I'm now 'working' for the student magazine), I downloaded this 5.6MB zip archive, only for it to not be able to find a compatible JVM environment. Now, admittedly, it was designed for 1.3.x, but would run on 1.4.0. Since I (allegedly... ) do Java as part of my course, I naturally have the latest version, which is 1.4.2. Which is apparently invisible to the installer of this Java application (created using InstallShield), since it couldn't find it.
It popped up a message telling me that I could manually tell it where the JVM was, so I did, using a command line parameter. But no, it still wasn't seeing the damn thing.
In the end, I gave up. It's not like the program was that important anyway and I don't really have the patience to get it up and running. Come on IBM - if you're so big and clever, then you could at least allow your programs to run on newer versions of the JRE, or at least update your program so that it does.
I'm beta testing FeedDemon 1.10, which is the first release to include support for Atom. Since it's a new feature, I'd like to test out a variety of different Atom feeds, so that I can report any bugs back to Nick (so far I've found two, at least one of which is fixed for the next beta).
So, if your blog is on the list on the right, and you're not Belle de Jour, Utterly Boring (not literally, I meant the weblog with that title), or Dive Into Mark, then reply to this with a link to your Atom feed. If you don't have one, then either configure your blogging software so that it does or badger the author of the software to add support for it. Movable Type users can add the default template (MT 2.65+ only) if it isn't there already, Blogger users can alter some setting, and I don't know about any other CMSes because I haven't really used them.
Although I didn't intend it, all the links posted to Smaller World today (so far) are browser-related. They're particularly interesting to Mozilla users, or those considering the switch, hence the reason why this is in the 'Mozilla' category, which has been somewhat neglected lately.
February should bring long-awaited new releases of Firebird and Thunderbird, so perhaps I'll have more to talk about.
2 years ago, I said that barely anyone outside the US watched the Super Bowl. But interestingly this is becoming less true. At least one bar in Bradford was open until stupid-o'clock this morning showing live coverage (bearing in mind that New York is 5 hours behind the UK), and it even made the news here. I suppose it's a good thing as, hey, you never know, it may be a game that us Brits could be good at if we get our act together.
Oh yeah, we won the Rugby World Cup, didn't we? Okay, maybe we don't suck that much at sport. :)
Of course, the boobie incident made the news here too - thanks to Chris for that link which includes NSFW photos. Although she was wearing tassles so you don't see everything...
Via Google Weblog comes some screenshots of Google's new look. It does look good, and certainly makes the search engine look more modern than it does as present. It also takes the minimalism that partially made Google popular in the first place a step further.
One notable exception, however, is the Google Directory. If you look at the screenshots, there are no direct links to it, nor any categories shown in the search results, although I imagine the 'More >>' links would lead to it should you click on them. You probably know by now that the Google Directory uses data from the ODP, so as an ODP editor (albeit a somewhat less active one) you might think I have an opinion about that. And that I do.
A couple of weeks back, I downloaded an MP3 file of "The Most Beautiful Song" by the German band Lunik. Although it played fine in Winamp, when I loaded it in dBpowerAMP, with its XAudio decoder, it burped on it, reporting its length to be 2 days and 6 hours as opposed to 3 minutes and 34 seconds. I could explain why this happened, and a draft of this post did, but I ended up writing 4 paragraphs of general waffle.
Instead, I'll tell you that I used Foobar2000, a barebones media player for Windows which includes the ability to fix MP3s that report the wrong length. Add a file to the playlist, right-click on it and choose 'Fix MP3 Header'. The file should now accurately report its length.
It's been a very long time since I last did a monthly stats roundup, mainly because my previous host didn't have a very good stats package. Now that I have a choice of Analog, Webalizer and AWStats, I can bring you these facts for the month of January:
The following will be familiar to anyone who has had to live in shared accommodation. This sign is now up on the wall in our kitchen:
Basic Kitchen Etiquette
- Don't steal other people's food. It's not nice.
- Don't use other people's cooking utensils, unless you ask them first. Make sure you wash them up properly afterwards.
- Don't monopolise both sinks. Some of us want to wash up too.
- Don't leave your dirty plates lying around for days. This is a kitchen, not a bacteria propagation lab.
- Try to keep the place clean and tidy for everyone else.
Of course, the notice itself uses a bigger font with red and blue text, just to make it stand out a bit.
