251 lines of Python on the wall, 251 lines

Fuck me. I just wrote 251 lines of Python in several hours. Several hours I should have probably been sleeping considering I needed an early night (but if I wake up I'll have a long car journey in which I can write and sleep). But it's a damn good 251 lines.

It's a simple interface for reading a blog that's in a MySQL table. It's dynamic rather than the static type I made for South Square. I'm pretty impressed with it. I'll release the source (it's GPL'd) some day soon. Like when I have the time. It's pretty cool though.

Now is time for sleep!

Windows Links

A nice article about human multitasking.

Wackget, a wget-based Windows download manager. I recommended it to my good friend Will (notice I didn't call you Odd this time) when he was having trouble downloading a Knoppix ISO. Will found wget for Windows, which is probably fantastic too.

Tinyapps.org. Small, gratis Windows applications. I noticed a lot of ports of good UNIX software there.

Free as in Freedom

Free as in Freedom (Part 1)

Overall, this was a good article, but I'd like to make the point of correcting the author on a couple of mistakes:

• ``[...] plunk down roughly $30 for a "distribution" on CD or DVD from companies such as Red Hat, Debian, SuSE and others.'' Debian is not a company and, as far as I can tell, does not sell CDs.


• ``Fortunately, KDE licensed Qt under the GPL [...]'' Qt is owned by Trolltech. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License and the Q Public License only for Linux, Unix and Mac OS X. If I recall correctly, the license for the Windows version is non-free.

I also have some thoughts to add.

I tend to use the term Open Source more often than Free Software, but I use them interchangably. My thoughts lie with the RMS and the FSF in that I love freedom but ESR is right in that Open Source is often an easier term to use when talking to lusers and that it's easier to convert people to `Open Source' (software that is cheap and better than alternatives) than it is to convert them to `Free Software' (software that allows users freedom). Observing the terms from afar they offer the same things but I think they mean different things to the people who use the terms from a phenomenological stand point.

CMS, CSS, PHP, SQL, TLA

This is for all those morons who say `alt tag'.

Is HTML a programming language?

NOT the comp.text.sgml FAQ.

That's how to comment CSS.

I just got a nice book out the library. I was searching for something to do with PHP and MySQL and what did I find? Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. It's about web usability. I'm loving it already.

Before that I was testing South Square Centre's site in Horton D1.01 on IE (6). I couldn't test it in Opera because my login is still somehow fucked (just on the UNIX machines, though). I always get disk quota errors on both linux1 and on the workstations. That's probably the cause of X not working too. And yes, I have tried deleting things. That wasn't too bad. It just meant I had to get the CSS working in IE and then go home and make sure it still works in Firefox. I'm sure it will work in Opera. I don't give a jot about how the site looks in any IE before 6 because as long as my sort-of-boss thinks the site looks okay, it's fine. Anybody with IE should upgrade anyway.

And by the way, the new style is uploaded as default now.

I have a table roughly designed for the CMS for my new blog. It shall have markdown-esque powers and the stylesheet will not be tested in any any browser that doesn't care for standards. Not by me at least. If people tell me the style is entirely unusable in IE I will import the style such that IE can't see it. Now all that planning is out the way, I can get down to writing the code. It will be in Python, of course, like all my major projects have been for some time now. I may write a small amount of it in Perl because Python's re module doesn't appear to have a substitute method.

PHP5, RSS and come-shots

This week's Debian Weekly News was interesting.

There's an unofficial PHP5 package available. And there was an interesting question or two from debian-legal mentioned.

There's a load of RSS feeds of patent applications by everybody's favourite companies.

Bringing Down a Copycat Site.

Now onto my dream. I had an odd dream. I was at Rios except it was nothing like Rios, it was a dream version of Rios. Summer was there. And for some reason I was looking for Emma (who is Summer's friend who lives at the Foyer). That was great fun. The next part of the dream was somewhere completely different. There was some kind of orgy-like thing going on. With about four people. Will (uni Will, not Odd Will) was having sex with this fat woman. He was fat too. Like comically obese. Like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. I came in his face and he enjoyed it. I couldn't possibly comment on what Freudian dream analysis would reveal about me. It was, by the way, a wet dream. Stupid reproductive organs that think they can just go ahead and come when my concious isn't paying attention.

I was pretty impressed that by 4am I'd managed to post thrice in my blog for today. I am clearly a 1337 blogger.

Dooce

Oh dear. Neil mentioned Dooce in the questionnaire I did in the last post and linked to in the post before that.

It wasn't long ago that I'd spend hours and hours and hours reading accessibility blogs until 4am (it's 3am now). But then I got out of that habbit. I must have been reading this blog for at least an hour or so now.

If I'd tried heroin, I'm sure I'd get bored and go back to reading blogs.

Her about page is a great short biography. I read every word. She's a good writer.

Oh dear. It's now 3.38am. What a hillarious blog. At least the Dooced category is.

Big questionnaire!

1. What did you do in 2004 that you'd never done before?

Hmm. I had a girlfriend, I wrote a CMS, I installed NetBSD, OpenBSD, Debian, and Knoppix.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I didn't make any.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

Ireland and Northern Ireland.

6. What would you like to have in 2005 that you lacked in 2004?



7. What date(s) from 2004 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

When I had a girlfriend, probably. It was odd. Odd as in I'd never experienced it before. And that day I night I had another torsion (twisted cables in scrotum) but it turned out to be just a kidney stone. I can't think of anything else that stood out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Hmm. I'd say getting into university, but it wasn't at all. I got 100 UCAS points less than I needed and they let me in on the last open day.

I also stopped taking my inhaler. I haven't used it for a month or just under now. Hardly an achievement. I just stopped taking it. But it's a good thing.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I can't think of any.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

As I said. I had a kidney stone.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My PVC coat.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Let's see. I'm stuck for ideas. So Poland. They stopped software patents, at least for now.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

The European Union who pretty much went ahead with software patents without asking anybody.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Accomodation and food.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I got excited about broadband. But not really, really, really excited.

I'm quite excited about Summer's party on Friday.

16. What song will always remind you of 2004?

I doubt any will. The majority of the music I listen to tends to be music I find (i.e. I'm leant a CD, I download it, etc.) and generally isn't year-specific. I couldn't tell you what year any of my music is from.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

Happier or sadder?

Happier. Around about now last year I was probably working my arse off on psychology coursework.

Thinner or fatter?

I'd hope fatter. But I wouldn't know.

Richer or poorer?

Richer. Definetely in the sense of non-material wealth but probably in the monetary department too.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Eat.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Drudgery.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent 2004-12-25 alone and probably hacking, I don't recall.

21. Who deleted question 21?

Will did. He always spoils things.

22. Did you fall in love in 2004?

Hmm.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

Did you count?

Twice.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

Flint the Time Detective. Or Neon Genesis Evangellion. No idea, really. I don't watch TV any more.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didnt hate this time last year?

I don't believe so.

26. What was the best book you read?

Eats, Shoots & Leaves was the best non-fiction. The Foundation series was the best non-fiction.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I'd have to say Cradle of Filth.

28. What did you want and get?

I got myself a USB stick, PVC trousers, PVC coat.

29. What did you want and not get?

Not much, really.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

There were so many. I can't think of the best but My Summer of Love was rather good.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Wednesday evening I went out to Rios and I became 18 at midnight. On my actual birthday I saw Damien Rice and Tresspassers William with Cat and Laura at the Sheffield Octagon. Then on the Saturday I had a party organised by Davina and Cat at South Square. There was no drinking on my part whatsoever, by the way.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

I couldn't say. Maybe if I'd spent more time hacking and less time drudging through A-Level work.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2004?

For general activities my fashion has not changed greatly, it's just comfortable clothes or whatever clothes I happen to have. Except my coat. I now have a very sexy PVC coat.

But for going out it changed. I used to go with the previous concept but now I tend to wear sexy PVC trousers and some kind of random black top I expect my going out collection of clothes to increase in size next year.

34. What kept you sane?

My ability to lock the requirement of A-Level--related drudgery out of my mind for great periods of time. In which time I would generally hack at whatever project I was working on at the time.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I couldn't say. I haven't ever paid much attention to celebrities and the public figures I pay attention to have more brains than sex appeal.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Possibly software patents.

37. Who did you miss?

I miss Jane right now. I haven't seen her since the end-of-school party at her house. I'll have to visit her one day at school. I also miss the kids (my mum's a childminder) whom I haven't seen on a regular basis since I moved out. Right now I miss Niall and Will, and to a lesser extent, my other friends on the course who are all home for the holidays it seems.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

I'd have to say Niall and Will. Yes, I chose two people.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004.

Always leave washing up an item until just before you need it. That has saved me so much effort.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

We're leaving together, but still it's farewell.

I don't know, maybe it has a little significance. It's a good song though.

The great valid markup challenge!

``Open Source'' vs ``Free Software'': Is ``Free Software'' Dead? (there's a lot of scrolling to do).

I use the two terms interchangably. I don't think either term should drop out of usage; they're both important. I don't think having two terms causes too much confusion. Many ideas have more than one term. Maybe it does with lusers, but who cares about them?

I have an idea. It involves Google, the W3C's (X)HTML validator and a lot of websites.

What I shall do is to search for an arbitrary term using Google (for example `spanner') and I will validate the first n documents it returns. This task will be made quicker with the help of the w3c-markup-validator package. The term, the URL, and the validation status will be stored. This will then be repeated for a number of terms. Then the data analysis will begin!

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that if you have IE, would you be kind enough to take a look at the Trinity theme and email me a screenshot? Thank you very much, holizz❀gmail❼com.

Muahaha! I have finally solved my problem of getting the .htaccess file to redirect /Core  files (note double-spacing) and /Artists files to new locations! I just had to put the parts with spaces in double quotes.

Ooo, I just found a quiz! I shall post this and then do that.

Got w00t?

My best friend, he looks just like this dot: small, handsome, and adventurous.

Today's kids playing yesteryear's games

Ah! I just finished the new architecture of South Square Centre's site with an upload. Trinity shall be the default stylesheet once it's been tested in that great bane known only as IE. No, I shaln't be testing it in /Mac due to the immediate lack of Mac in my immediate vicinity. Maybe I should add a little Firefox button for all those luser with non--standards-aware browsers.

You can download a tarred, bzip2ed dump of the distribution in /archive/. I'm very sorry for the lack of comments in the Python. I'll add some one day. The table is pretty self-explanitory without having to look at the Python compiler.

Just to make this clear, this is (at the moment) just meant as a tool for keeping South Square Centre's site up to date. It's not some fancy open source CMS. Yet. It's open source (GPL 2) but it has way too much in the way of hard-coded stuff. Once all the hard-coded stuff is gone and I add a configuration file, it should start to look a little less single-minded.

Of note in the Trinity stylesheet is the lack of display: none in the #skip (``Skip to navigation'') link at the top of the page for those using screen readers. JAWS and its screen reader friends often ignore the W3C's recommendation (or whatever) that they read elements with display: none (as display is not an aural thing).

Bug reports and whatnot to holizz❀gmail❼com.

I learnt some things today. Now, kids: who knows about Debian's alternatives system?

Let's start where I started---the update-alternatives(8) man page (it took me a while to find a copy of that Debian-specific man page online).

Actually, I don't want to teach you anything. Learn it for yourself, that's what I did. Of note is x-cursor-theme, x-www-browser. The lack of some kind of x-email-client is certainly notable. It is notable due to the fact that when I click a mailto in x-www-browser (okay, Firefox), it tends to open KMail, well now it doesn't open it in anything.

Also, I got Mozex stuck in my chrome again. I suppose I'll never learn. Mozex is a great idea; shelling out to another tool for view the source, editing a textarea, telnet: `links', etc.. It just doesn't work. It would be okay if I could uninstall it but it sticks itself in my chrome.rdf and won't come out. It doesn't even add an entry in the extensions RDF file. Now I have to manually un-fuck my chrome.

Genius

Well well well, who is the genius of South Square Centre (.co.uk)? It would appear that the webmaster is. And the webmaster just happens to be me.

And why is this sexy blogger a genius, you may ask. That's because this new CMS is the best. So what if it's full of kludges? It has a site map generator. And it's cool. It also uses yet another recursive acronym for fantasticness.

Now one decision remains. Where to put the link to the sitemap in the markup and in the style.

Oh yes, I fiddled with my XF86Config-4 and my Xmodmap today. My trackball's buttons now work. The down scroll button is still middle or 2, but the up scroll button is `back' or 6. And no, it doesn't have a wheel. And no, scroll buttons are no use at all.

I'm also using Ion3 now. And when reading about GNU screen, I discovered An Ode to screen, which mentioned screen running in three xterms. I hadn't noticed this behaviour yet. Now I have more than one xterm with the same screen session (it's screen -x to attach to an attached session).

Fop

I have some criticisms of the Morgue File.

My first thought was that ``Photographer's drop boxes'' is wrong because there's more than one photographer, it would seem. Then I noticed that links were done using Javascript. This is wrong. Then I noticed ``Maker'' was meant to be ``Marker'' in a certain place. Then I thought that I could rectify that if it was a wiki. Then I thought that if it was a wiki, it would have thousands more pictures than it does now. Then I noticed ``Flowers'' in ``Objects'', which makes very little sense (that's a top-level category for Animals so why do I find Flowers somewhere else?). Then in ``Still lifes'', I notice a subcategory called ``metalSculpture''. The term `Still life' has two parts. Stillness and liveliness. There appears to be no naming conventions at all, which is just silly. All in all, it's a bad site with lots of good pictures.

Cloned kitten sold for $50,000.

GSC was co-founded by billionaire John Sperling, who hopes to clone his dog Missy.

I'd say rather than a cloned dog, he needs some kind of therapy to deal with the loss of his dog.

US couple seeks cash for Hobbit Hole. Have they not heard of DIY? Lazy, greedy bastards.

Hahhahaha!!!

Of course it runs NetBSD

Google's Zeitgeist is out for this year.

I was trying to create an account with DynDNS.org and I was reminded of how inaccessible certain anti-bot protections are. That `type what the image says' thing is so bloody hard! It must have taken me at least six attempts and I have an excellent monitor, a graphical browser and excellent eyesight! It must be hell for some people to register on certain sites. If I was a graphics/AI programmer I'd try and program something to read these `protections' against bots and people.

DynDNS is working now though and I have ddclient installed to make sure DynDNS's thing is up to date.

It's 2004-12-25, otherwise known as a Christian holiday. Even though I didn't participate in Xmas, I did recieve some gifts.

• A chess/draughts/ludo/backgammon mini travel thing. It's shiny and has a button to open it. It's all magnetic too. That was from Pam and Shirly.


• From Davina I recieved a bin, some cards, plastic folders, malt loaf (Morrison's own), The World's Stupidest Signs (a perfect gift considering I spend half my time criticising signage), socks and some other things like food and toiletries.


• I got some socks and post-its from Magenta and Petrafina (Davina's fish).


• I got a card from Roisin too.

One of the signs in the book Davina got me goes as follows:

For Sale

Caravan's eggs

Possibly the most amusing puntuation mistake in all of signage.

Before Rios last night I was waiting for Summer on Shearbridge road, I believe---the one by Bombay Stores. I was standing in my sexy PVC coat. Somebody pulled up and asked me something. I couldn't quite hear him at first. I must have asked him six times at least. In the end I heard him properly. ``Are you working?'' he said. I said ``No''.

Rios was good last night. Simon played very good music. At some point I said to Summer that ``I can just feel that he's going to play Rammstein next'' and he played Rammstein. Maybe he started fading the Rammstein in before I said that and I heard it or maybe it was just a coincidence. Andrew was wearing a red suit with fluffy white trim. He had a red hat too. No idea what that was about. He said people kept asking him for ponies.

And what did I do today, you ask?

Why, I installed NetBSD.

I put it on my smaller hard drive. When I get pkgsrc configured properly it'll be easier to install packages. As of yet I have very little installed on top of the base system. For some annoying reason I can't find any WWW browsers installed in the base system. Very annoying.

I love you, Tor!

Summer won!

Last night at Rios, Summer won Tom and Summer's Most Enthusiastic Dancer Award. She dedicated part of her award to Carney, the Most Enthusiastic Smoker.

It was like a circus skills workshop last night with all the poi.

Almost as exciting as Tom and Summer's Most Enthusiastic Dancer Award ceremony, I have discovered (with the help of Slashdot) a magical service which anonymises and sort of encrypts one's communications. And the advantage of this system over all the other ones I've tries is that not only does it just work, but it just works behind a firewall. It's called Tor and it's being promoted by the EFF. It's available from Debian's main APT repository, in unstable/Sid.

I set it up in Firefox (Preferences/General/Connection Settings) as a SOCKS host (127.0.0.1 / 9050). I tested it on hostip.info and it worked! Maybe now I'll be able to use normal IRC. Stuart may like the news as he bought an MMORPG and the university blocks the specific port it uses.

I just got it working using tsocks (don't forget to set up /etc/tsocks.conf). I'm connected to irc.freenode.net (port 6667) for the first time in ages!

Woop, I got 95/100 on my SDTD lab test 2. There's one I got 3/5 for which I shall be contesting.

The question was:

1.11) What single command should I type in the UNIX terminal window in order to extract lines from a file called source.txt containing string Wed? [5p]

My answer was:
grep Wed source.txt

Niall (who got 100/100) answered:
cat source.txt | grep Wed

Niall's theory is that they wanted us to use pipes but they didn't ask for pipes. The two commands comply with the question's requirements and give identical outputs.

My little CMS is coming along. It's at the stage where I can put all the content into the database and have the Python script generate the content. I'd like to tidy up the script as it makes far too many requests to the database. But it is ready to use. I may make a PHP interface for editing the content but the Python script works very well. I'll be sure to make a backup of the database and stick it on the website.

I may see if I can improve Python-markdown. It would be useful if it actually worked. I use it because it's the only Python implementation available.

As promised, I have a picture of my beautiful coat for you. It's a bit blurry but then so are most of my pictures.

Gingerbread CPU.

It's a mecha.

Skunkworks project at Apple.
Nice DRM article.

I think a Mini-ITX system would be reasonable cheap. At least compared to the big things that computer shops usually sell.

£74.03 IA EPIA 5000 Fanless Motherboard
£139.83 Hoojum Cubit 3 Mini-ITX Case
£22.33 LiteOn 52X CDR/RW Drive

= £236.19

Plus a hard drive, keyboard and pointing device, it comes to the price of not very much (I already have a monitor I could use).

My current ATX system cost about £800. A Mini- or Nano-ITX is the way to go, I think.

Good coders know what they're going to do and implement it. Great coders start implementing it and then work out what it is.

All-day blogging

A Fatal Blow to Shrinkwrap Licensing? It's a classic tale of girl meets proprietary software, girl undresses proprietary software only to find the terms of the EULA to be unacceptable, girl returns proprietary software, CompUSA doesn't let her, girl sues CompUSA, Adobe, Staples, Best Buy, Microsoft and Symantec.

Web inaccessibility `creates 'net underclass'.

Some of the sites linked to amuse me. For example, with a frameset says:

This CD-ROM uses frames. Please use a frame enabled browser.

It's not a CD-ROM and it doesn't have any noscript tags.

<!-- Hide from JavaScript-Impaired Browsers

They realise that the Javascript is hidden from browsers without Javascript yet they don't realise that the site is entirely inaccessible to browsers without Javascript. What morons.

On the Open Internet, a Web of Dark Alleys. Sorry for linking to the New York Times, but the article was just so amusing. You can use BugMeNot or the Google exploit. When reading articles like this I feel the need to write secure communication applications.

Calendar reform. For some reason I don't take these people very seriously;

3.) Doesn't your innovation mean that, for some folks, the date changes when the sun is overhead?

Yes ... but those folks live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
They don't care what day it is anyway!

I have a few pratcial problems with this calendar. For a start, they provide no algorithm for calculating which year the Newton month falls upon and they expect people to rely upon a list. The list goes from 2003--9998: not very useful when you want to calculate Newton months in the past or distant future.

Forgotten Element Types. Apart from the notes about abbr and acronym which I don't really agree with (and a few commenters don't, I can see), I'd say this was a rather good article.

1337 MySQL skillz

Today I installed Ubuntu for somebody I sort of know. He lives next door to Owen.

It was fun. I installed a lot of nice extra packages for him. Like Firefox 1.0.

The first time I install Linux on a machine that isn't my own and I even get paid for it! Crazy!

After my short stay on his computer, it was very nice to get back to astro, my beloved PC. That makes me think. Maybe I should make a vanity page for my computers. Yes. I'll do that. There'll be pictures too. A full biography of each machine. Then I'll have a place to show off about my latest cool computer (not that I'll be getting one any time soon).

That's the first time I've looked at porn... using TDFSB. It's a cool little application.

Tonight I have been playing with MySQL. I made a cool thing with MySQL and PHP. It's available: here.

Pretty simple, yes. But it's my first experience with BLOBs. I was impressed that it was so easy to make the PHP output a BLOB which was an image.

For those of you without the time to read the source and test it, the PHP script connects to the machine table (on `tadams2` in this case) and lists my machines. It inclues an image for each one and some text. The image cannot be put inline. The image source is the script itself. The script then looks in the database for machine_image or machine_small_image depending and throws it up with a special header ("Content-type: image/jpeg"). It's a nice example of an all-in-one script with a nice bit of recursiveness.

Speaking of recursiveness, there was a recursive algorithm I implemented in my magix script the other day. It's very nearly ready. I just need to be able to add actual files (rather than crap to be stuck into a template) for CSS and images. Then it will be operational. There will be no pretty UI (yet). I can just use phpMyAdmin or MySQL CC to edit the data.

Until I write a pretty UI, the trainee gallery curator will just have to learn some 1337 MySQL skillz.

The script technically almost works. But if it's to become a general tool, I'll have to do some serious tidying. A pretty PHP-based web UI would be nice too.

FreeSBIE

I just downloaded Live Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and I am currently downloading FreeSBIE.

Italicise unread tabs in Firefox [Via].

After recieving yet another piece of spam with a Microsoft Word `.doc' attachment from some random idiot about something I know nothing about, I have decided I will ask to be unsubscribed from ubu-soc-members@bradford.ac.uk and ubu-sports-members@bradford.ac.uk. If my email titled `UNSUBSCRIBE' doesn't work then maybe I'll have to go down to the reception one day.

I want one. It would be portable too. I could take it anywhere where there's a spare monitor or TV and I'd just need some cables and a keyboard (and maybe a trackball).

This post is rather odd in its chronology. I wrote the first paragraph yesterday. Now I have both the FreeBSD LiveCDs burnt. Unfortunately, the GNU/kFreeBSD CD failed to boot. But FreeSBIE works great. It asks a couple of questions to get my locale and then it asks me if I want a virtual terminal, Fluxbox, single user mode, etc.. I chose Fluxbox, of course. It includes Firefox 1.0 with the Web Developers' Toolbar, Adblock, etc.. It has XMMS and VLC. All that stuff. And the advantage over the NetBSD 2.0 LiveCD is that X works and so do various tools.

It has loads of crap in Fluxbox like magical CPU thingies that tell you what's going on at any second. It's kind of annoying as it moves and flickers, but I'm sure there are people who like that sort of thing. Anyway, I killed all that crap now. It includes irssi and fun things like that too so I can connect to bitlbee (since Gaim doesn't appear to work). It also mounts any hard disks it finds in /mnt by their filesystem, which is interesting.

Now I'm going to reboot and have a shower.

More magix and PVC

Internet Explorer: The Girlfriend from Hell [Via]

`World's Biggest Luddite' heads for the UK

Today I was dining at South Square Café and Pat, whom is a member of the committee and in charge of the gallery and stuff told me she had some apprentice gallery person (whatever they're called). The gallery person wants to do some stuff with the website (I naturally became very cautious). Pat doesn't really know what her collegue wants to do with the website. But I figure that this could be a good test of how good my new CMS will be (I just made a not to include backups---specifically, a full revision history of the tables).

So here's how the project's looking now (see last post on magix for the older info):

• It will have a PHP frontend which will allow editing of the content (this is to make it easier for non-techs to use it---I'd be very happy if this associate of Pat's was a web hacker but it's not going to happen)


• It will upload the files to the site via FTP (there's nothing magical available at South Square so it'll have to be on the uni MySQL/PHP/etc. space)


• I wrote out a draft roadmap up to about 0.5


• I'll write more about this when I have the data in the tables and I've got my hand-written notes in a more computer-friendly form

I went shopping today in Leeds. I spent lots of money on a very sexy PVC coat. I'll take a photo at some point.

The Internet: Beyond the Porn

I have now uploaded The Internet: Beyond the Porn as postscript, portable document format, hypertext markup language, and a source tarball. I do apologise for the excesively long uniform resource identifiers.

I went to Alun's party tonight (or yesterday evening). It wasn't bad. Could have certainly been better. It was certainly a change from Rios.

magix bedrooms

A nice story by Demie.

The project has been submitted. I only noticed one error between printing and submitting (a link in a footnote was typeset in Roman rather than monospace). Expect to see a copy of the project uploaded soon (i.e. after the deadline)---maybe tonight or tomorrow. There's a tarball of the source, postscript, portable document format and hypertext markup language ready to be uploaded.

Recently I re-implemented xmagic in Python (originally in Perl) and called it magix. It doesn't do anything drastically different. I am, however, thinking of making it drastically, drastically different. My plan goes as thus:

• Put the pages into a MySQL table


• Put the template and other options in a MySQL table


• Add extensible plugins (i.e. Markdown and such---note: python-markdown)


• Putting the pages into a MySQL database lifts the limitations of the filesystem thus allowing me to do more exciting things---think a single PHP page fetching the pages from the databse and another implementation would make a static collection of files, a script could create a site-map in just a few lines


• I shall probably start this project next week some time. I expect it will take me about a week (or a day if I wanted to kill myself) to get a working implementation of this

Now I shall go to Thornton to babysit, eat at a fine café and go to a party. See you later.

Five hours of non-stop LaTeX

I think I was doing LaTeX from roughly when Stuart sent me his essay till just about now. I just checked Gmail and it seems he sent me his essay at `2:22pm'. It is now 1930. If my observations are correct, I have been typesetting in LaTeX (and writing my own essay) for five hours straight.

I shall make available the essay in PDF and PS formats and maybe a nice web-safe one. There'll be a tarball, of course.

Links which I cannot be bothered to stick in sentences:
http://annevankesteren.nl/archives/2004/12/mobi-stld

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD

I fucked my Xbox but I can't fsck it

I came across and interesting scam targetting asthmatics. If there was an actual cure for asthma that involved simple breathing exercises, it would be available for free from many, many websites. The fact that they're selling information that would be freely available if it was true tells me that this is a scam.

Hmm, since writing the previous paragraph I have discovered that somebody bought that. They say it works. They're kindly printing me a copy. I'm actually feeling amazingly well considering I've been off my seretide since Saturday morning. I'm excited by the idea of becoming completely independent upon drugs. I do have a Seretide Evohaler (spray rather than power) ordered too.

I fucked my Xbox today. I and Niall were trying to copy Dyne:Bolic to the hard disk. That was fine (ish). Then I mv linux Linux and mv temp Temp and that fucked it. I think the inode of the directory disappeared so the directory is there, but undeletable. I think it happened because FAT tends to be case-insensitive. And it seems the kernel or filesystem (FATX), being shitty, decided that the best thing to do was to lose the inode and leave the crap in there.

I shall certainly buy me some hosting and a domain name when I get my next loan payment. I shall soon have WordPress. Woop.

TUMMY ACHE!

I am never buying food from Awan's Newsagents on Laisteridge Lane ever again.

I'm not sure about the Top 10 software innovations of 2004 (beware of the JavaScript that sticks you into a frameset). It calls Mozilla Firefox's `find as you type' feature number one. This isn't innovation, it's been around for years but its inclusion is very useful. The first time I came across it was in Emacs, C-s (Control+s) and type. If anything in Firefox is innovative, it's the Web Developers' Toolbar which allows one to stop JavaScript with two mouse-clicks (and pretty much anything). XUL is also a very innovative idea, I believe.

But no! I mustn't blog! I have to do my essay.

Bootstrapping.

I mounted a CD-ROM today in the small Busybox installation on my Xbox, which now has a name---Xenia.

How to mount a CD-ROM in the MechInstaller installation:

# find-cd

Looking for CD-ROM at /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd...

# mount -r /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/cd /cdrom

The `#' is the prompt, don't type it. As you can see, find-cd locates the CD-ROM device for you. The -r mounts the CD-ROM as read-only (the default is read-write and this causes a few warnings but still mounts). The /cdrom is the mount point.

It was a pressed (i.e. not burnt) Dyne:Bolic CD as included with Linux Format issue 55. It's designed to run on an Xbox with a hardware modification so it has files one can run on the Xbox. Not sure how one goes about executing the xbe files (Xbox Executables).

This is, of course, progress. Now I need to boot from a CD-ROM. Now, kids, don't do this at home... unless you have MechAssault and the Emergency Linux savegame.

Haha, I was just cooking tea and I sort of burnt it and I thought it tasted like the beech-smoked tofu I sometimes have.

And that was my exciting bootstrapping for today. I made a small amount of progress. Next one must boot the CD-ROM.

Links.

Haha, I love the poster in this post.

I want to go on a trip to hell too, like these people. I wonder where I can get a copy of the original Doom files for prboom.

Something that I've noticed with NetBSD is that when it tries to start X (which it fails at---presumably due to a limitation of the fact that it's a live CD), I sometimes see images I saw on X the last time I was in Linux. It is rather odd and I'm not sure what causes it.

So. Many. Links.

Purely accidentally I noticed this on my Seretide inhaler:

Also contains: lactose monohydrate

So not only am I consuming 500 micrograms an animal product twice daily, I shall soon die of not taking my inhaler. Shit.

I shall make an appointment for as soon as I can on Monday. No, I won't continue consuming lactose. I'll get an appointment and get an alternative.

I'm having trouble picking a topic for my part of the KSCP2 group coursework. I first thought of `Web Accessibility', then `The Web as a Universal User Interface'. Now I don't know what I want to do. Usually I have plenty to say. But I just can't think of an appropriate topic. I asked everybody else to get their work done by tomorrow so I want to try and get my part done by then so I can start typesetting the whole document. It's annoying as I can write and talk at great lengths on a lot of subjects but it seems like I can't think of any subjects I could write an essay on.

I just discovered something. In a KSCP lecture Deb told us Intel was a name designed to make people think of intellegence. According to the Wikipedia, it was an abbreviation/acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
List of company name etymologies. It's rather interesting.

I just discovered the best internal Wikipedia page ever: Wikipedia:Unusual articles.

Vagina dentata. Interesting.

Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense

I discovered how one changes IP address using the Rosetta Stone for Unix. The few times I was connecting to my Xbox before I was rebooting (textual substitue for embarrased emoticon) when I changed /etc/network/interfaces. It's a simple job of /etc/init.d/networking restart (in Debian, at least). I tested it quickly just now and it doesn't appear to work.

I nice article by Demie.

Oh dear. I haven't done my essay. And now I'm reading somebody's blog: Some criticism of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Some interesting gay rant. I found Redemption i a Blog too.

Gah! I'm going to sleep. I hope I think of a title for my essay soon, otherwise I'll spent a number of painful hours writing a very bad essay. It will be grammatically correct, correct spelling, stuff like that. It will also be terribly written.

Speaking of, John was the first member of the group to hand his essay in. It's almost all typeset, I just have to ask him about one sentence that bothers me and I can't fix it very easily. Also, it would seem that the project will be released under the same license as my previous essay, HowStuffWorks Doesn't Work: CC/by-sa.

Things I want in the not-so-distant future:

• A beowulf cluster (okay so I'll need more than a PC and an Xbox running a minimal Linux system but it'll happen one day).


• A nice TLD and some good hosting.


• A nice new name, possibly Holizz Tom Adams. Maybe I'll think of something with less of my original name in.


• A topic (and a title) for my essay. In fact, I want this in the immediate future.

Now I shall head in the direction of bed as I am very tired and not at all happy about not doing my essay today.

23:28 I had my last HCI lecture on friday and I decided that alongside
reading the course text I'd also read usability blogs for the
exam we have in January. In the lecture he mentioned a theory or
something thought of by Jakob Nielsen. I just realised that I
already have Jakob Nielsen's blog in my bookmarks :D

His blog is great.

Hehe, I just thought that was pretty cool.

Ooo, good article: Undoing the Industrial Revolution

Today I have been learning about MySQL. I have discovered that I can't log in as `holizz' (I can log in anonymously) to my local MySQL server but I can log in as root. It's rather annoying.

Yes! I did it! I created an account and now I'm logged in. Yay! I'm sorry if we ever fought, MySQL. I do love you. Maybe I'll do something with you in PHP one day.

Haha, I laughed at somebody's misfortune today. I didn't realise it until after. I was in the `Cellar Bar' in the Priestly Centre and there was a band on. They finished and people clapped and I heard a glass/pottery-based device break somewhere behind me (I didn't turn round). I was puzzled by the odd look on people's faces who were looking in the direction of the broken glass. I turned round and all I noticed was a man sitting down on the stairs and I thought nothing of it. I said something like ``Some people just take their applause too far'' (or something). It sounded better in my head. Davina complained at me and told me some guy had fallen over (I then assumed the look on people's faces was some kind of shocked concern and the guy sitting down had fallen down). I wasn't impressed at being told off for nothing---that's always annoying. Like when her computer doesn't work one time she always blames me. She is rather stupid sometimes.

Let me recount the tale of the time I tried to run Knoppix on her PC, or rather the highlights. I told her to shutdown her computer and she asked me how to do it (she's been using her PC for years now). I told her to reboot it on a seperate occasion and she asked if it was the hard-reboot button on the front of the case. I almost had to grab her hand away from the button. She's had her Windows 95 box for a long time now, it wouldn't like a hard-shutdown or -reboot.

I discovered two new games today: Tux Racer and BZFlag. Tux Racer is cool and rather pretty---you're a penguin and you belly-slide down a hill to the finish. BZFlag looks like it could be very fun on multiplayer---it's a tank game.

Now I must depart for bed.

Memes, beer and justice

"Bow, nigger." he typed.

Such a good article.

Linux and beer.

Richard Stallman has the best comment. I agree with the comment about having a sharper mind, alcohol sucks.

Being realistic about Linux hardware compatability. An nice little article for those who complain about Linux not working with their hardware. Roblimo compares those people to somebody trying to install Windows on a PPC architecture, or something.

Music shuffle meme, thanks to Neil.

1. Open up the music player on your computer.


2. Set it to play your entire music collection.


3. Hit the shuffle command.


4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. Thats right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. Its time for total musical honesty.


5. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.


6. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You dont have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if youd like.

Here's my list, taken from MPD:

1. KoRn - Ass Itch


2. Cradle of Filth - Swansong for a Raven


3. Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (Subliminal Seduction Remix)


4. White Zombie - More Human Than Human


5. System of a Down - CUBErt


6. Cradle of Filth - Absinthe With Faust


7. Anathema - Ascension


8. Slipknot - Pulse of the Maggots


9. Kittie - Into the Darkness


10. Bush - Letting the Cables Sleep

Friday Q and Super-computing Clusters

I just wandered through Centenery Square at night for the first time in a while. I used to be able to wait in relative silence for Summer to turn up. That new Lloyd's No. 1 Bar is rather noisy. I like the way every scrap of land is being taken up by the pursuit of money. It's really nice.

It's Friday Q time again!

FQ TOPIC: Routine.

FQ1: Describe your morning routine on work/school days, from the time you wake up until you leave.
Boot my box, surf teh Intarweb for a while, have breakfast, Internet, have shower, Internet, leave.

FQ2: Now describe your morning routine on NON-work/school days (weekends, holidays, etc.).
Internet, breakfast, Internet, shower, Internet, stay at home all day shooting zombies, hacking in whatever language I choose, and other fun things.

FQ3: And finally, describe your night-time routine before you go to bed.
Read, brush teeth, read, sleep.

FQ Fantasy: You've won 100 million dollars in the lottery! Re-write your morning routine one month from now!
Boot cluster of super-computers (which I live in), Internet, breakfast, Internet, shower, Internet, leave. This is as opposed to the super-computing cluster of old and cheap hardware I will (eventually) live in otherwise.

Downloading NetBSD, woop

I got a nice letter today from the TV Licensing people practically accusing me of recieving TV broadcasts. They'll come round one day, accoring to the letter. So I can tell them to fuck off (sort of) in person.

I am currently downloading NetBSD in live form (i.e. i386live.iso) from Finland.

I want this.

Address Bar Meme

A nice, fun meme today. You type a character into your browser's address bar and see what URI comes up.

This meme stolen from Neil.

• A: http://astro/phpmp/playlist.php. astro being my hostname and the URL leading to the PHPMP client to MPD.


• B: http://www.bmezine.com/.


• C: http://www.comp.brad.ac.uk/intranet/modules/KSCP/. KSCP resources page on university intranet.


• D: http://www.deadjournal.com/~bluesilverfur/. Jenni's blog, woop.


• E: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=.htaccess&action=submit. Editing .htaccess.


• F: file:///home/holizz/blog.html. A symlink of this file, blog. I was just checking how it looked.


• G: http://gmail.google.com/gmail.


• H: http://holizz.blogspot.com/. I don't read my own blog, honest.


• I: http://ipac.brad.ac.uk/ipac20/ipac.jsp. Appears to be a 404 at the moment. I expect it's the renewals page (on the library website).


• J: http://www.jwz.org/.


• K: http://kidshealth.org/kid/grow/drugs_alcohol/know_drugs_heroin.html. Wow, it's an anti-drugs propaganda site. That was ages ago.


• L: http://lamp.inf.brad.ac.uk:59279/wp-admin/categories.php. A WordPress admin page. I had WordPress installed on my LAMP userspace until I decided I couldn't get the categories to work at all (it was some annoying PHP error I couldn't fix---and where's the <backronym> tag in XHTML 1.1? ;-).


• M: http://molly.com/.


• N: http://www.neilturner.me.uk/.


• O: http://www.opera.com/. I downloaded and installed it to my userspace at university for site testing.


• P: http://packages.debian.org/python. I've been waiting for 2.4 to make it into unstable.


• Q: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/opacity.html. That was the only link for q.


• R: http://www.resnet.brad.ac.uk/latestnews.htm. Could be an intranet page. It's what I was redirected to (using JavaScript) after I logged on to ResNet (now I use a script).


• S: http://slashdot.org/.


• T: http://www.theregister.co.uk/.


• U: http://unispeak.blogspot.com/.


• V: http://validator.w3.org/check. I'm afraid to say that this page is not valid anything.


• W: http://webmail.brad.ac.uk/. University web mail.


• X: http://www.xbox-linux.org/Software_Method_HOWTO.


• Y: http://www.yafla.com/papers/purejpeg/filter_unnecessary_jpeg_info_such_as_exif.htm. Wow, I only went there once.


• Z: http://www.zeldman.com/.

Multiple Browsers Window Injection Vulnerability Test. Doesn't appear to effect my Firefox. Probably due to my single-window browsing preferences. Now I don't even realise if some crap website tries to open a popup or uses target="_blank" on an anchor.

Force links that open new windows to open in:
The same tab/window as the link

Pure browsing bliss.

Must. Have. CD-Rs.

MSN Spaces: Seven Dirty Blogs (Via)

The Most Hated Advertising Techniques (Via)

I probably need a sideblog ... maybe when I get a nice WordPress blog on my own server.

11:47 I was in the student health centre the other day and there was
an advert on the radio. ``I wonder if my widescreen TV has a
guarantee'' ``I don't think your widescreen TV has a guarantee
because your widescreen TV is two normal TVs nailed together''
11:49 Needless to say, I thought the nailing two TVs together idea was
better than the idea of buying a new widescreen

Lorum Ipsum-killer. It even does Esperanto.

I've decided (just now) that I shall test which window managers do and which do not support Unicode in titles. All other window managers simply do not display titles with Unicode in them.

• Window Maker---Unicode appears as broken character


• lwm---Unicode appears as blank character


• Openbox---Unicode appears as broken character


• Metacity---actually renders the title correctly


• kwin---Unicode appears as broken character

The window managers tested were (most of the window managers in Debian's APT repository):

• 9wm


• aewm


• aewm++


• AfterStep


• amaterus


• Blackbox


• Enlightenment


• evilwm


• FluxBox


• FVWM


• IceWM


• Ion3


• Larswm


• lwm


• Metacity


• Openbox


• PWM3


• Sawfish


• Twm


• uwm


• Window Maker


• XFwm/XFce

Exciting work, no? I'm surprised only one of all of those supports Unicode in titles. Maybe I'll have to convert my everything to Unicode one day, then it may work.

Aparantly my secret Christmas name is `Scrummy Kissy-Tummy' (thanks, Neil). I have no idea why the scripter(s) of the entirely useless script decided my CPU's time was more precious than my own. I read an article about usability at some point which mentioned that it was a central point of HCI that my time is precious and the computer should do the work. The article made the example of forms that asked for one's credit card number without the dashes/hyphens---the user should be able to write the correct digits with whatever prettyness they like and the computer should strip the prettyness out.

I believe I may have discovered how one is to install Xebian.

A MechInstaller-prepared Xbox will:

[...]

and run Linux from hard diskthrough an extra menu entry in the dashboard run Linux all installation and live CDsfrom http://xbox-linux.org that have been released after August 1st 2003; at the moment, this is only Ed's Debian.

URI: http://stacywebb.biz/linux-xbox/XboxLinuxModWithouttheModChip-stacywebb.biz.html.

Very interesting. I infer from this that one can insert a Linux CD (i.e. Xebian) and install it. I recall something stressing the importance of good CD-Rs. My copied audio CDs don't play in my Xbox either... This must mean I need some CD-Rs that the Xbox likes. First I had to find a flash stick, now a nice CD-R. Then I'll be fine because I'll have Xebian (Sarge) installed and I'll be able to ssh into it or get a USB keyboard to do stuff with it.

Tom
although the document I put on the web is .doc, I actually prepared it
using Open Office under Linux ... and gently suggest that you view it the
same way ...? By choice, I use HTML but occasionally bow to .doc in
the interests of expediency if there is formatting involved, and I provide
paper copies. I'll bring paper copies to Friday's lecture ... I stuck it
on the web as someone had started worrying about what it was and where to
get it.
Hope this helps. Thanks for the document format info.
Deb

I'm shocked. We get taught how to use hyperlinks and `mind maps' in KSCP and Deb uses OOo on Linux? How can this be?

It surprises me that she uses the Word format if she's using OOo.

From ``B.S.H.S.1'':

BRADFORD STUDENT HEALTH CENTRE 235876. COULD YOU PLEASE CONFIRM YOUR ROOM NUMBER*PASANTE condoms 12 for only £2.99 from Savers.Never use a condom more than once

The sender is only identified as ``B.S.H.S.1'' (i.e. no number), which doesn't make me trust them. The poor grammar and two fully-capitalised sentences makes me trust them even less. I did give the doctor a form telling them I moved from Shearbridge Green to Bradford Halls yesterday (when collecting my prescription and getting my tracks looked-at). But I don't trust a text with poor grammar, adverts and no number. It would be almost as bad as giving permission for a payment via email. If they want my confirmation they can send me a text with good grammar and a number or they can call me.

What corporate America can't build: a sentence. Also amusing is that the first page stops mid-sentence and continues on the second page.

Multi-paged articles anoy me. Especially when there's only about 30 paragraphs overall. A book can be split into chapters---this makes sense. But why split an article into many pages when it's so short? I think some people like to pretend they're typesetting paper-based newspapers. It's terrible for accessibility or usability. It's very painful breaking off from a thought and moving to another page to rejoin the thought.

Xbox-Linux!

Haha! I discovered my style crashes Konqueror (the KHTML rendering engine), at least it crashes on the local style (the one I uploaded seems fine). Work continues, of course, on the `Purple' style (it is available on any page of the site now. I added a simple hack to the `Classic' style to allow for a link list at the bottom of the page.

Erik discovered an interesting scriping tool for Windows' GUI: AutoHotKey.

The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for.

URI: http://science.slashdot.org/science/04/12/05/144249.shtml?tid=14.

Great news! I discovered how to enter Unicode directly with the keyboard in X! It certainly works on my keyboard...

1. Find the character's hex notation (i.e. the sexy white florette is U+2740).


2. Hold down Control and Shift and type in the hex (if you let go of either Control or Shift the character will appear and you'll have to start again).


3. Let go of Control and Shift and see your gorgeous character appear.

Now I'll have to start editing in GVim if I want pretty Unicode because vim, xterm and screen together do not make for good Unicode.

I can't see any means of entering the decimal of a character, which is annoying for me as I have the decimal of various characters in my head (i.e. quotes and dashes) for HTML decimal notation. The hex notation is useful as that's what most documents note Unicode as.

Some admin at university expected me to read Word documents:

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 11:44:09 -0000, Nigel Hulley wrote:
> Please find attached a word document which gives a summary of IT
> facilities in the School. This is being sent in response to an issue
> raised in a recent staff/student liaison meeting (SSLC).

I'd like you to note that not everybody pays copious amounts of money to Microsoft so if it's not too much trouble, could you send documents in a more portable format in future? HTML and PDF are very well-supported formats, plain text is even better.

Further reading:
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

One of our course tutors expected me to be able to read Word crap:

On Mon, 06 Dec 2004 11:14:11 +0000, D Twigger wrote:
> Details of the assignment and guidance on report
> writing can be found on the KSCP web resources, available via blackboard
> or directly at http://www.comp.brad.ac.uk/intranet/modules/KSCP/
> Please include, with your report, a completed Formal Report Summary
> Sheet (available from the web resources) to summarise the individual
> contributions of group members.

Since I don't pay copious amounts of money to Microsoft I do not, fortunately, have Microsoft Word installed. Could you please make the documents available in a more portable format such as HTML, PDF or plain text.

For more information about better formats for document exchange, see:
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html

Thank you
Tom Adams

Today I and Niall stuck a savegame image on Wendy's stick and that was put on the Xbox's hard drive. We then got MechAssault from GameStation and I now have Linux on my Xbox. Xebian's (Debian Sarge for the Xbox) proving hard to install.

I also got Resident Evil for the GameCube (the remake of the original, I believe). It's enjoyable and it was only £5 so it doesn't matter how good it is.

Sexy White Florette ❀

After Rios last night I saw Jen, Fiona, Mike (I think that's his name---the one who loves my cock) and some other guy at the door. Jen told me Richard (LGBT officer at Bradford College who attends the University meetings) said that if I shaved my beard and cut my hair he'd fancy me (or something to that effect). Bastard.

Posted: on TINSPAB: here (sorry, I don't think ezboard has permalinks):

I'm considering spending a year in some European country during my university education (i.e. as an exchange year or as my industry placement year). I've thought Europe would be a nice place to live for some time now. Not sure if I have any reason better than Britain being a bit crappy. Sure I'd miss everybody I know but it would be fun. And if I went for a year it would be a fun way to test it out.

Woop, another of my friends now blogs: Owen. I'll have to write down a list of these people for when I get some good hosting and have to stick some stuff in my blogroll on WordPress.

So, what Happy New Loan/Grant Payment present should I give to myself this time? I have several options:

• Name change = £39 + effort in informing various companies that are too fragile to have a wrong name in their databases.


• Hosting and domain name ≈ £40–50.


• Piercing ≈ £30–40.

I have recently come across an incredibly useful tool for accessibility-loving web designers: Fangs, a screen reader emulator extension for Firefox. Basically, it takes a web page and produces text output that represents what the majority of screen readers would read the page as. Extremely useful if you don't have a screen reader to test your page on. I found it via Anne van Kesteren.

Now I have yet another tool to use to moan at bad deisgn. Often I'll look at alt attributes in the image properties, use the Web Developers' Toolbar to disable CSS and make sure they're not using tables for layout or other crazy things.

I also found an interesting article about The Sound of the Accessible Title Tag Seperator. It includes sound samples of what screen readers read common title seperators as.

I think I shall be condemed to read accessibility blogs until 4am and then die of over-accessibility.

I just found a very interesting article on quoting: Quotations and citations: quoting text. It goes on to show how one can make good use of the cite attribute in blockquotes! I sometimes resort to sticking the quote in an a in a blockquote in my blog but this is a great idea!

On South Square Centre I've been using (in psuedo-code): open-quote, paragraph, open-quote, paragraph, close-quote on the exhibition pages (example). After being inspired (and taught new CSS skills) by this I may implement a better solution in the new design.

what enemy, this daughter? by Molly. Incidentally, this is where I first discovered WordPress.

Oh shit, it's 2am and I'm playing about with fonts for a graphic for a new design of South Square's homepage.

But I have discovered how to embed Unicode in CSS strings. I think this design is taking shape. I just need a few graphics (oh, what I'd give for Sydney's graphic design skills).

I was trying to make a star graphic a few weeks ago. Now I find the exact thing I wanted in Unicode, how unfortunate that I didn't see it earlier and that I didn't find how to embed Unicode in CSS earlier.

Okay, so staying up till 2.45am isn't usually a good idea ... but today I have created a fucking masterpiece. Okay so it isn't finished but it's pretty fucking good. It needs completing and it needs a few tweaks to the style and maybe a better logo (some better content would be good too but that will have to wait) for accessibility and prettification. It'll need a `skip to navigation' link for accessibility (as the link list is now at the bottom of the markup). I may also want to stick all the CSS in one directory for easyness.

I should probably start updating the old artists' pages too. I was only asked to do that a month or so ago.

One may view the masterpiece in its temporary home here.

One thing it will recieve plenty of is testing. But not now as it's almost 3am. Any criticism/etc. is very welcome. Note the very sexy white florette (❀ or U+2740).

Shopping, window managers and death

I woke up at 3.15pm and it is now 3.44pm. I just realised while I was making breakfast that I had a dream about buying (Tesco's own) Multigrain Hoops from Tesco. And just now while thinking about resizing a window I realised I also dreamt about a window manager. But that's okay, I also dreamt about a friend (nobody in particular---just somebody who existed in my dream) being kicked almost to death and some kind of game which involved me killing baddies (I recall a Halo 2-like ability to dual-weild weapons) and at some point I was driving in the dark, it took me a while to realise I had to put my headlights on full to see where the hell I was going because there were no street lights (even though I was travelling mainly on streets). A well-balanced sleep, I believe. Just like real life---a good mix of shopping, window managers and death.

Rios

I just came back from an entirely pleasant night at Bradford Rio. I walked home drenched in euphoria.

I met Summer and Carney in there. Some strange band was playing. Andrew was there without his girlfriend (either Kelly or Haley---I didn't hear when he told me). As it was a Friday, Simon the DJ was there. He played Rammstein first, which means I gave super-mega great head. Simon played a lot of other good music, of course.

I went to the Blue Boar (also known as my ex-local) last night (well, the night before last ... if we're being pedantic). Jenny (not to be confused with Jen), Sammy, Katie and Owen were there. I beat Owen at pool, I stroked Pam and Shirley's puppy, I spoke at length with Owen on university life. I also invited anybody to come to Rios tonight (last night). To my great surprise, Jenny came to Rios (and dragged Katie along). I may go to the pub again on Thursday as it was rather pleasant this week.

Tonight (last night) I went to the latest opening at South Square Centre. I had a yummy pea and potato curry in the café. The show was rather good. Some guy (Phil) came up to me and asked me if I wanted pictures of the opening for the website. That was very kind of him. My camera doesn't do motion shots. At all. So there
will be some action shots of the event soon.

Hehe, I was playing Doom. Or rather, prboom with the freedoom game files. It's a nice game.

I have a problem. It would appear that on the inner side of my right ancle I hav
e a numb bit. On closer inspection it appears as if I have a few collapsed veins
in that area. I have an appointment with the doctor on Monday so I'll see what
they say.

I hear birds cheeping so it may be time to go to bed. Goodnight.

DOOM

I forgot a couple of things in my previous post. Today instead of being taught about hyperlinks, we were taught about mind maps (or brain-storms if you remember the days before political correctness went wrong) in KSCP. If you missed it in first school, we get taught it again. How useful. We had to do a `mind map' about `holiday'. Needless to say `blimp' and `hydrofoil' were listed under `how to get there' and `watching pr0n' was listed under `what to do there' and not to forget `Japanese rape pr0n' under `what to bring'. If Will were there I'm sure he would have proclaimed it to be inappropriate.

I think I recieved the first piece of spam (not from a university mailing list) to my university email account today. It was from `Email-by-Post'. I reported it as Spam in Gmail.

I downloaded prboom (port of DOOM) and freedoom (datafiles) via APT this morning. It was fun. I often played games with one person shooting and one moving when I was younger. I may have to get into DOOM, it's good fun.

I believe John is now in Wales with his family, girlfriend, etc.. I had lunch with him yesterday in the Ftc and I got a CD with nice music on it from him (my CD-R, his music collection).

Friday Q and pot

I just read an amusing article about Halo 2 and San Andreas top watchdog group's ``most violent'' games list. In the final paragraph Gamespot steps out of the role of reporter and steps into the role of pedant. It was good though, several of the games on the year's most violent games list were released in previous years and some are yet to be released. They're all rated `M' by the ESRB so I don't know what their problem is.

Interesting. It's not a bug in Firefox that stops titles containing UTF-8 being displayed in the window manager's title bar. It's a problem that occurs in Fluxbox (0.9.9). Titles appear to display in Window Maker 0.91 but with a funky character in place of UTF-8 characters, they appar not to work in 0.80. It doesn't occur in all window managers, of course, most notably it does not occur in Metacity, GNOME's default window manager.

I wonder if there are any Linux distros that come with full UTF-8 support.

* * *

As it turns out, Computer Confluence (the KSCP course text) was shipped by the publisher without the CD-ROM that is mentioned throughout the book. This was evidently not noticed until nearly the end of the first semester as nobody has read it. I think this is very cheeky of the publisher. How can they expect anybody to buy their books (I didn't) if they don't sell them with CDs. It's like selling half a book and then expecting eager customers to pay again. It was some nice person at the on-campus Waterstones who forced the publisher to give them the CDs for free. They wanted them to pay £5 per unit.

* * *

Friday Q:

FQ TOPIC: Blogged.

FQ1: Which entry in your blog is your favorite so far and why is that?

Probably I'm right and Will's not, for no great reason. It was just fun.

FQ2: Which entry in your blog has gotten you the most attention and why do you think that is?

Probably the same one. Probably because I was complaining at somebody and he complained back, teehee.

FQ3: Which entry in your blog do you feel was overlooked and why should people have read it?

Oh, all of them. My blog could be read by 10 million people … but it's not. This is a problem we need to address.

FQ Reveal: Which entry in your blog do you think is most indicative of who you are and what makes it so?

Bah, they're all indicative of me. My infinate greatness shines through in each and every one of my posts.

* * *

Now I shall go and eat a pot meal (no, not that type of pot) and maybe some sandwiches.