Holizz

The End.

2005-01-11T22:01:00.000Z

Thought I'd mention I moved again since this is still the number one result for holizz on Google: holizz.com.

Well, that's it. It's all over. The end of an era.

But it's also the start of a new era. I've moved out of Blogger and into my ~~new home: holizz.niallfleming.ath.cx~~.

Goodbye Blogger.

I hate the hacker purity test

2005-01-09T01:48:00.000Z

purity -a /usr/share/games/purity/hacker

you answered 440 'no' answers out of 510 questions, which makes your purity score 86.27%. 0x181 and 0x200 -> Computer Illiterate

Hmm. Somehow I'm not sure this particular purity test is entirely valid.

Misc links

2005-01-09T01:11:00.000Z

Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?

Richard M. Stallman: Portrait of a Pirate Hacker

Hehehehehe. This is a good site.

Teeny Goths. I think I know some people like this.

There was some interesting news from Debian Weekly News last week and now Newsforge is reporting on a controversial package known as Hot Babe.

Neil's Magical Meme

2005-01-08T18:23:00.000Z

Woop, a meme! Thought up by Neil: How Open Source are you?

So. How Free am I?

To save typing time, everything in this list is free unless otherwise stated.

Operating System: Knoppix Debian GNU/Linux

It's lovely. But I shall be installing Sarge when it becomes stable.

IM Client: irssi

It's not annoying like Gaim with its font sizes that don't change or the inability to block the width or itacism of some idiot's font. But Unicode doesn't work too well with it being in a screen in an xterm. But then us-ascii is the only character set that can be trusted to work on all platforms. So maybe it's a blessing in disguise.

Editor: vim

I use it all the time. It's a great editor. And the pretty colours are nice when you spend hours on end hacking.

MySQL Front-end: mysqlcc (MySQL Control Centre)

It's pretty damn useful. MySQL Administrator doesn't let you stick data into tables, etc. and MySQL Navigator is a little crappy. What a great explanation of mysqlcc.

X Browser: Mozilla Firefox

In its current guise it doesn't meet the DFSG's definition of Free. But it's in main so it's free enough for me. It's going to have to be repackaged to exclude the non-Free parts and the name will have to change due to the Mozilla Foundation insiting that non-Mozilla packages will have to be under another name.

It's a good browser though. One day I'll build it from source and include SVG support.

X Mail Client: Mozilla Thunderbird

Same as above.

Document Production: LaTeX

It's an excellent language. When my new blog is complete it will use LaTeX-like markup, such as `` for a double back quote.

Media Players: mpd, vlc

mpd is fantastic. It's a daemon that plays music! Much better that that XMMS crap! It fits in with the Unix philosophy of ``do one thing well''. All it does is sit in the background and play music. It has a bit of playlist ability but that's it. For a front-end I generally use mpc, which allows commands like mpc play, mpc next and mpc stop. When I'm in a more music-changing mood I generally use GMPC, which is a nice GUI.

vlc is nice and it plays allsorts of shit with the codecs from mplayer.

Summary

Hehe, it's like a colophon. Sort of. I love it!

Something Awful and permalinks

2005-01-08T05:07:00.000Z

I was reading a nice article today, shown to me by my good friend Uni Will. Engines of Grief. It started out like your usual anti-moron rant and degraded into talk of church-bombing.

The article isn't the main point of this post. But it's the starting point. The main point is a usability problem with Something Awful (SA).

The problem, is that there are no permalinks anywhere near the articles displayed on the home page. They should be there. People like me will not link to an article on the home page of a blog. It's just wrong for so many reasons I will not get into now. There's a disadvantage of the lack of permalinks already, less incoming links.

Getting the permalink: click News Archives, click January 2005, scroll down and hope that the script that updates the archives has been run since the article was posted. If not, click the last article and increment the number until the article you want is displayed.

I don't know about anybody else but I wouldn't do that every time I wanted to link to an article, I'd just not bother.

I simply propose that articles on the home page have permalinks available.

I must confess that I do not hold SA in highest regard, but by Space the home page needs permalinks!

And here is my short and hopefully informative and persuasive email:

Dear webmaster,
I came across a small but annoying usability problem with Something Awful. I noticed that none of the articles on the home page are displayed with a permalink. There aren't even permalinks available in the archives for the latest articles (at the time of writing), I had to manually increment the article number.

I expect people would be more likely to link to or bookmark particular articles if permalinks were more readily available.

Tom

Friday Q

2005-01-07T22:19:00.000Z

FQ TOPIC: Time.

FQ1: What's something you often must do that's a complete waste of time?

Attend labs. They're compulsory. I may spend less time going to lectures this semester if they're anything like they were last semester. Or maybe not. Introduction to Web Technologies could be pretty amusing.

FQ2: Who's a public figure you wish would stop wasting everybody's time?

Darl McBride. Although he hasn't been in the news lately, I'm sure he's still an annoying wanker.

FQ3: What's something you'd like to do more of if you had extra free time?

Read blogs, blog, learn and programme (they often merge, which is good). But that's what I do most of the time anyway, so it's just a matter of doing less sleeping, eating and socialising, which are all things I enjoy.

FQ CLOCK: What time is it where you're at right now, and what time zone are you in?

I think this ISO-8601--formatted date string says it all, really (it's the output of date --iso-8601=seconds):

2005-01-07T22:08:55+0000

My timezone being GMT at the moment. BST is annoying.

Misc links

2005-01-07T22:05:00.000Z

Casio watches: now with built-in terrorism!

According to this story, a warrant isn't needed to search a PC when its owner allows it to be searched. What a non-story. If this idiot wants privacy, he should get his own PC, install OpenBSD on it and lock it in a cupboard.

/me drools. Only £5.

I for one welcome... Robosapien V2.

After reading this and testing it I decided to remove the accesskeys from South Square Centre.

You know you're taking the wrong degree when...

2005-01-06T04:02:00.000Z

When viewing the material for a specific module which included writing CGI scripts, I wondered if we could hand in things we have done outside the course for coursework. For example one piece I noticed had something about using a script to access a MySQL database and I already have a lot of good scripts that use MySQL.

Last morning (it was 2005-01-05 very early in the morning) I and Niall were looking at information for a module we will be taking next year called Introduction to Web Technologies (IWT). When looking to see if there was any updated material for the module (it starts in February, the lecturer should start putting stuff up soon), I mistyped the URL and ended up looking at the third-year course Deploying Web Technologies. Of course being about 1am in the morning and having just eaten cookies and soldered the mainboard of my Xbox in an attempt to enable me to flash the read-only BIOS (it didn't work, unfortunately), I don't think either of us noticed this. So we continued looking at what work we may be likely to come across, still thinking that this was a first-year module. So we have a read of each section and laugh at how easy it will all be.

Now that I know this is the most advanced module (out of a whopping two modules) on the WWW, I feel quite upset with the Computing department. I'd have said its content would be suitable for a first year module. I'm really not happy that this is a third year module. I can write more advanced things without thinking (just recently I've written two MySQL-based content management systems---one static and one dynamic---and a cache for Gravatars). I was expecting this course to challenge me at least a little bit.

What ever will I do to keep myself entertained throughout this course? I've already written about half of a prototype dynamic web content management system (one could argue what I've written could constitute the whole of the project since it is a prototype---it just needs some next/previous links on each page), which is not only a final year project, but it is also a masters project!

I'm rather pissed-off about this. I thought about reading the resources for the masters module Web Technologies but there's precious little there and the terrible design looks like somebody who doesn't know the first thing about writing Web pages wrote it. I like the way a masters module on the Web has a link to a Beginner's Guide to HTML. Can it not be assumed that a graduate of Computer Science wanting to do `Web Technologies' would already know HTML? I suppose not.

This is one of those few times where I really get annoyed at something. I come to university and my LEA pays thousands of pounds to Bradford University. And for what? So I can sit around doing my own personal projects for half the year (the holidays are so long) and the other half the year I'm going to lectures or labs and sleeping or playing on the wheelly chairs respectively for a couple of hours each day of the working week.

I'm going to have to invent new ways to have fun. Like whole new methods in pursuit of the concept of fun. It's going to be so boring if I don't constantly keep myself doing nice things. I could very easily run out of things to write (software-wise, that is, I can always blog). I should write a 100 Things to Do Before I Graduate list.

In just thinking randomly I came up with an interesting idea that I haven't seen implemented (I'm sure Opera already has it as it seems to do everything Firefox doesn't). Framed browsing (not to be confused with dreadful framesets). Such as splitting the browsing pane into two frames with one being in one frame and another being in a second frame. Each frame should have access to all the same set of loaded pages (like using the same screen session on two xterms on the same desktop). I'm sure I've seen screenshots of something with lots of sub-windows inside one browsing pane. But that's more analogous to having 26 xterms open rather than two xterms and a single screen session with 26 screens in the session. A nice feature of this framed browsing would be the ability to drag a link in frame A and dropping it into frame B.

I believe there is a final-year project in Computing related to creating a multimedia WWW browser. It could be an interesting thing to consider.

In summation, I am not happy about the quality of my course (especially since I'll get bored one holiday and do each and every one of the masters and final year projects). Now I must depart for pastures much sleepier. Goodnight, the Internet.

Firefox sucks

2005-01-06T02:43:00.000Z

I beat Slashdot. They suck, I rule.

I recall an article I read some time last year about HCI mentioning that since the back button is more commonly used than, say, the forward button it should be larger and easier to click on (possibly so that when the window is maximsed the buttons should extend to the edge of the screen and not be one pixel away from the edge (I believe this may be a limitation of Gtk, or it may not). This is assuming the window manager sticks the right-most pixel of a window at the right-most pixel of the screen when maximised, of course. Anyway, I found an interesting extension for Firefox known as MileWideBack. It basically turns the left border of the window into a back button. The author of the article (which a quick Google search does not find)Ãsuggested making the back button a little wider. But this extension could be even better as it may make that left-most row of pixels in the window useful.

The reason I was browsing for Firefox extensions was because I'd read in one of Jakob Nielson's Alertboxes (Reviving Advanced Hypertext) that Opera ``[gives] users buttons to go to a site's home page, help system, category listings, and so on'' and I wanted an extension to give me access to a page's links (I ought to add some useful links to SSQ's template). I did find some links rather useful when using the w3m interface to emacs. Specifically, pressing space would scroll down until one reached the end of the page. Pressing space once more would go to the page's next link (very commonly used in documentation generators).

Unfortunately, I found no extension that makes use of navigational links. I'd write one myself if it weren't for the fact that XUL confuses me. I could write the Javascript for it and maybe, if I copy/paste from some other extension, I may be able to get the XUL done. But I'll be damned if I know how to make an extension.

Gravatar cache: now in PHP

2005-01-05T15:15:00.000Z

Guess what happened today. In the early hours of the morning, just after I and Niall had given up flashing the Xbox's BIOS, I recieved an email from Blogger. Somebody called Colin had commented on my blog. He ported my Python-based Gravatar cache to PHP!

Here's an example Gravatar fetched from the PHP version: It's Neil.

The source is, of course, available.

How fantastic, eh? I may think about contacting the people at Gravatar.com, they may be interested.

Advise for CS students. Learn C before graduating? I learnt it before I finished my GCSEs.

I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated by programmers with crazy ideas that make sense in code but don't make sense in capitalism.

What? That makes no sense to me. But then I suppose I don't understand microeconmics. How would code and an abstract concept like capitalism mix at all? Except in a game like Slune (see previous post or something).

Apart from the odd, incomprehensible bits (i.e. the bits I didn't understand---I'm sure it all makes perfect sense), it's a good article and it certainly got me thinking.

debian-legal have been discussing Mozilla's trademarks and images.

2005-01-04T10:03:00.000Z

Messenger Plus! installs Spyware? According to a screenshot of Microsoft Anti-Spyware Beta, at least. I can't wait for them to start bundling a feature-limited version of this with Windows. The other AV will be pissed off and then they'll bribe Yet Another Government. Again.

I downloaded Tux Paint the other day. Davina will certainly be hearing about this. She was planning on getting a new laptop and (having me) installing Linux on that and leaving Windows 95 on her desktop and let the kids play with that. But this software is damn good. It reminds me strongly of a kids' Windows painting program I once enjoyed.

That was the first monthly newsletter on Dooce I've read. Awwwwwww.

Today I am going to South Square for lunch with Davina and the kids. I will then be playing games with Will. He has recently acquired a GCN and he already has a GBA SP and he has a GCN--GBA link cable! I shall be playing with the Tingle Tuner. And later on I shall most-likely be meeting Summer for non-Rios (gasp!) activities.

Cheap evil

2005-01-04T01:37:00.000Z

Wikinews may not have a lot of stories but there are some good articles.

Man bites dog. No, really. Idiot. ``Effective form of punishment'', punishment is not effective.

Whoa, a little while after writing the above about Wikinews, I find a big link-o-rama from Slashdot on a similar subject: Wikipedia Criticised by Its Co-founder.

Today I have been playing Slune. It uses Soya 3D.

At the bottom of the README in Soya, it says ``Enjoy Soya 3D ! And stop eating meat !''.

Slune is a driving game like Driver in that you have missions. But it's rather cartoonish. You're Tux and the story is basically Tux driving around in various efforts to get AIDS drugs to people in Africa. There's Gnu who tells you what to do and where to drive. And there's Shark who is an American pharmaceuitcal bastard who tries to stop Tux. It's a pretty good game.

I'm considering doing something bad. Possibly worse than buying Halo 2 (it's okay though, I returned it...). I'm considering buying two, yes two, proprietary products. The first is Cedega (something that would allow me to play Windows games on Linux) and the second is Half-Life 2. Do you know why? My good friend Erik (whom never blogs, it would seem) showed me some videos demonstrating a mod known as JBMod (it allows one to weld objects together in Half-Life 2). He'd welded a canister of gas to a washing machine or cooker or something and it was spinning around in the air. The physics looks so good. Look at this lovely raft he welded together. Is it so wrong and evil that I want to taint my all-Free installation with this proprietary crap? I think it is.

Roughly £26 for the `bronze' package of Half Life 2 from Steam (or I could get the physical product in a real box for £30 from most stores, which I prefer the idea of---how does one return a product and get a refund from Steam?) and the minimum subscription of three months for Transgaming is £9. For all that evil it'll only cost about £40, which is less than money I accumulated from 2004-12-25-related presents.

Damn, evil is cheap. And it has good physics.

Grav cache

2005-01-03T01:55:00.000Z

Caching gravatars.

I thought it was an interesting idea.

So I implemented it, in the form of Grav cache.

There's no example due to the fact that lamp.inf.brad.ac.uk are idiots and don't have MySQLdb installed (come on, they don't have the only MySQL module I've seen for Python on a server called LAMP).

It has limitations, of course. Like it just uses Content-type: image/jpeg for whatever image simply because it works and I have no idea how to determine a MIME type from a plain image (without resorting to grepping for "PNG", "GIF", etc.).

Of course I can't get my own Gravatar. I expect I have to enable cookes or something. I'll try that tomorrow. But now it's time for bed.

2005-01-03T01:32:00.000Z

I'm feeling much better today. I even made nice food. Including potato wedges.

I did laundry day with Will so now I have some clean-and-not-allergy-inducing-tested-on-animals-crap clothes. I have to hang them up yet.

Debian on a tablet.

The Care and Feeding of FOSS. I didn't read it but it looks good.

I used to think of Wired as a good source of news.

They start with a single stolen file and pump out bootleg games and movies by the millions. Inside the pirate networks that are terrorizing the entertainment business.

But with sensationalist summaries like that, I certainly don't anymore. I think it was a combination of boring stores and the fact that the home page, at least, is set to refresh itself every so often.
``The Shadow Internet''.

Foop

2005-01-02T02:19:00.000Z

Look out for Windows Media files with malware if you're stupid enough to use Windows Media Player.

Knowing Knoppix. Released under the GFDL, an FSF license but not DFSG-free.

I downloaded a LiveCD and an installation disc for ReactOS today. It's free software, of course. It's designed to be compatible with Windows NT at the kernel level so that means one can (or will be able to) run Windows NT (maybe even XP, which is based on NT) applications without compiling them specifically for ReactOS.

Stop at around 2005-01-01 14:00, restart at around 2004-01-02 1:00.


00:55  why are you not great :(

00:57  I don't know. It probably all started with the cold shower. Then due 

               to the coldness of the shower I rushed and thus I didn't properly 

               wash my hair and therefore it was harder to comb and my day got 

               worse from there. Add to that any terribly-designed website I 

               attempted to navigate today.

On top of that I physically feel terrible today. My nose is sort of blocked up and my throat is painful and my septum is aching (I stretched it Wednesday after Rios) and if that wasn't enough, specific places in my general chest and abdomen area are aching slightly and I feel weak and tired all the time, I presume that's due to my poor diet and possibly general lack of food considering I've been having about two meals a day for a week or so now. And don't forget the rash I still have from Will's tested-on-animals washing powder and the prickly heat I've been getting for a while.

I often cook food I think is reasonably healthy. But I guess it can't be. I can cook nice-tasting food but I just don't seem to know how to eat healthily.

Anybody know any well-written blogs on good eating?

Any comments mentioning veganity negatively will be shot.

~~I'm going to read or something. I think I'll read Dooce. Goodnight, avid reader.~~

Changed my mind. I'm going to tell you about Rios instead.

I started 2005-01-01 like I start a lot of psudo-important days. At Rios.

I and Jen went to Rios at about 2004-12-31 22:00. Summer got there at about 22:40 along with Carney, Seb and Leamia.

The music in the goth room wasn't too bad considering the Wednesday DJ was there instead of the usual Simon.

Summer introduced me to Seb at one point. Which was good because I hadn't been properly introduced. He seems quite nice. He lives somewhere near Summer, I believe.

I ended up getting distracted by Dooce.

Now I'm going to leave this post here and read more Dooce or Don't Make Me Think. Of France!!!!

251 lines of Python on the wall, 251 lines

2004-12-31T01:43:00.000Z

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

2004-12-31T01:12:00.000Z

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

2004-12-30T16:59:00.000Z

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

2004-12-30T16:57:00.001Z

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

2004-12-29T18:43:00.000Z

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

2004-12-29T03:41:00.000Z

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!

2004-12-29T02:12:00.000Z

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!

2004-12-29T01:38:00.000Z

``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?

2004-12-28T23:34:00.000Z

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

2004-12-28T04:35:00.000Z

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

2004-12-26T15:12:00.000Z

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

2004-12-25T20:22:00.000Z

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!

2004-12-23T15:50:00.000Z

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.

2004-12-23T11:28:00.000Z

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

2004-12-22T02:34:00.000Z

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

2004-12-21T02:13:00.000Z

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

2004-12-20T13:24:00.000Z

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

2004-12-18T18:08:00.000Z

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

2004-12-18T02:17:00.000Z

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

2004-12-17T16:12:00.000Z

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

Five hours of non-stop LaTeX

2004-12-16T21:22:00.000Z

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

2004-12-15T20:25:00.000Z

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!

2004-12-14T16:35:00.000Z

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

2004-12-14T16:15:00.000Z

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.

2004-12-13T23:45:00.000Z

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.

2004-12-13T23:20:00.000Z

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.

2004-12-13T01:56:00.000Z

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.

2004-12-12T11:18:00.000Z

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

2004-12-11T18:39:00.000Z

"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.

Open up the music player on your computer.

Set it to play your entire music collection.

Hit the shuffle command.

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.

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

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:

KoRn - Ass Itch

Cradle of Filth - Swansong for a Raven

Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (Subliminal Seduction Remix)

White Zombie - More Human Than Human

System of a Down - CUBErt

Cradle of Filth - Absinthe With Faust

Anathema - Ascension

Slipknot - Pulse of the Maggots

Kittie - Into the Darkness

Bush - Letting the Cables Sleep

Friday Q and Super-computing Clusters

2004-12-10T21:50:00.000Z

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

2004-12-10T15:36:00.000Z

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

2004-12-10T08:53:00.000Z

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/.

2004-12-10T08:01:00.000Z
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.
2004-12-09T02:00:00.000Z
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.

2004-12-07T23:31:00.000Z

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 Â£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!
2004-12-06T19:54:00.000Z
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...

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

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).

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 ❀
2004-12-05T03:02:00.000Z
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
2004-12-04T15:53:00.000Z
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
2004-12-04T03:08:00.000Z
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
2004-12-03T17:06:00.000Z
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
2004-12-03T13:28:00.000Z
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.

200 Questions
2004-11-27T01:48:00.000Z
Usable GUI Design (Google cache incase it's still Slashdotted). An interesting little article on usability.

And here's a meme I found via Richy (I have no idea but they're a friend of Neil's and he did it.

I like questionnaires. But it's just a yes/no one. Strong (usually rendered as bold) is a yes ... or I have something to say about it.

Bought everyone in the pub a drink

Swam with wild dolphins

Climbed a mountain

Taken a Ferrari for a test drive

Been inside the Great Pyramid

Held a tarantula

Taken a candlelit bath with someone

Said ‘I love you’ and meant it

Hugged a tree

Done a striptease

Bungee jumped

Visited Paris. I spent Christmas up the Eiffel tower with my mum and had Vietnamese (maybe?) for tea.

Watched a lightning storm at sea

Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise

Seen the Northern Lights

Gone to a huge sports game

Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa. Hasn't the tower been closed-off since it's leaning dangerously?

Grown and eaten your own vegetables. I'm not sure if alfalfa is a vegetable or not. Davina (mum) grew some potatos this year.

Touched an iceberg

Slept under the stars

Changed a baby’s diaper

Taken a trip in a hot air balloon

Watched a meteor shower

Gotten drunk on champagne

Given more than you can afford to charity

Looked up at the night sky through a telescope

Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment

Had a food fight

Bet on a winning horse

Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

Asked out a stranger

Had a snowball fight

Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier. I scanned my arse on my own scanner.

Screamed as loudly as you possibly can

Held a lamb

Enacted a favourite fantasy. I tend to do stuff rather than dream about it.

Taken a midnight skinny dip

Taken an ice cold bath

Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar

Seen a total eclipse

Ridden a roller coaster

Hit a home run

Fit three weeks miraculously into three days

Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking. Depends on the definition of fool. I've certainly done it when others may have thought me a fool.

Adopted an accent for an entire day. I spoke in an American accent for a while. It was fun.

Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. My mum visited her old house in Liverpool when I was very young.

Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment. All the time. My life is the best.

Had two hard drives for your computer. I did indeed. I can't seem to get my BIOS to accept the other hard disk now.

Visited all 50 states

Loved your job for all accounts

Taken care of someone who was rather drunk. It's great fun.

Had enough money to be truly satisfied. I'm satisfied. And my money situation's not too bad right now. Oh you meant satisfied with how much money I have? Or is there a suggestion that to be satisfied one needs money?

Had amazing friends

Danced with a stranger in a foreign country

Watched wild whales

Stolen a sign

Backpacked in Europe

Taken a road-trip

Rock climbing. That's where I got the scar on my forehead. I was two, I believe. Stupid excuse for a father.

Lied to foreign government’s official in that country to avoid notice

Midnight walk on the beach. I probably have been. The beach at Towyn was nice. Maybe not quite midnight but me and Davina often sat in the car at night and ate chips while watching the sea.

Sky diving

Visited Ireland. This Summer. Good fun.

Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love

In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them. That's what happens when there's no tables left. I'm talking of cafés really, I rarely eat in restaurants.

Visited Japan

Benchpressed your own weight

Milked a cow

Alphabetised your records. No, but I put them all in an ... Access database. I wrote some accompanying ASP too, I believe. That was a similar and possibly related prject.

Pretended to be a superhero. Underpants on the Outside---my first real role-playing game. Good fun.

Sung karaoke. Probably.

Lounged around in bed all day. It may have been Wednesday or Thursday that I was ill and slept most of the day. Good fun.

Posed nude in front of strangers. Many times and many strangers.

Scuba diving

Got it on to “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye

Kissed in the rain

Played in the mud

Played in the rain. Probably. Most likely a running-based game.

Gone to a drive-in theater

Done something you should regret, but don’t regret it. “Accept no ought other than own” is a paraphrased moral injunction of Gestalt Therapy. If I ought do something, I do it.

Visited the Great Wall of China

Discovered that someone who’s not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog. Something like that. My mum found my ex-friend Dan's journal (it's like a blog but it's a called a journal---things were simpler in my day) via my journal and Dan wrote about the pills various people took one night in Rios. My mum found it and she complained at me. But it wasn't too bad, mostly annoying.

Dropped Windows in favor of something better. Linux in various guises for about a year now.

Started a business

Fallen in love and not had your heart broken

Toured ancient sites

Taken a martial arts class. It was good fun ... apart from the fact that it was crap.

Swordfought for the honor of a woman. What? I wouldn't fight in any physical capacity for my own honor so I'm not about to do it for anybody else.

Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight

Gotten married

Been in a movie

Crashed a party

Loved someone you shouldn’t have

Kissed someone so passionately it made them dizzy

Gotten divorced

Had sex at the office. Had what at the what?

Gone without food for 5 days

Made cookies from scratch

Won first prize in a costume contest

Ridden a gondola in Venice

Gotten a tattoo. It's got to happen sooner or later.

Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on

Rafted the Snake River

Been on television news programs as an “expert”

Got flowers for no reason

Masturbated in a public place

Got so drunk you don’t remember anything

Been addicted to some form of illegal drug

Performed on stage. I think the last time was a church school play for the `At Homes'. We ripped off The Meaning of Life by Monty Python. I was the guy whose leg had been stolen.

Been to Las Vegas

Recorded music. I played with a demo of Dance eJay. It was fun.

Eaten shark

Had a one-night stand

Gone to Thailand

Seen Siouxsie live

Bought a house

Been in a combat zone

Buried one/both of your parents

Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off. Oh yeah, loads of times. No waxing so far.

Been on a cruise ship. I think so. When I was rather young. One of my mum's cousins was working on it.

Spoken more than one language fluently. I think I was almost/slightly fluent in BSL back when I did it all the time. I was so good yet I failed. I did several weeks of a refresher course and gave it because it was boring as hell---the first teacher was the best.

Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone

Bounced a cheque

Performed in Rocky Horror

Read - and understood - your credit report

Raised children

Recently bought and played with a favourite childhood toy

Followed your favorite band/singer on tour

Created and named your own constellation of stars

Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country

Found out something significant that your ancestors did

Called or written your Congress person Member of Parliament…and confronted him…

Picked up and moved to another city to just start over to be with the one you love

…more than once? - More than thrice?

Walked the Golden Gate Bridge

Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking

Had an abortion or your female partner did

Had plastic surgery

Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived

Wrote articles for a large publication

Lost over 100 pounds

Held someone while they were having a flashback

Piloted an airplane

Petted a stingray

Broken someone’s heart

Helped an animal give birth

Been fired or laid off from a job

Won money on a TV game show

Broken a bone

Killed a human being

Gone on an African photo safari

Ridden a motorcycle. I tried to once. Under the instruction of the same father that let me go rock climbing on my own when I was 2. It didn't end up favourably.

Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph

Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced

Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol

Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild

Ridden a horse. I think I sat on one once. Maybe I rode it.

Had major surgery. I bilatteral orchidopexy's reasonably major.

Had sex on a moving train

Had a snake as a pet

Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon

Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing

Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours

Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states. It's not hard. US States: California (passed through Georgia without leaving the airport). Other countries: Republic of Ireland, France, Germany (Scotland and Wales if they count).

Visited all 7 continents

Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days

Eaten kangaroo meat

Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground

Been a sperm or egg donor

Eaten sushi

Had your picture in the newspaper

Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime

Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about. My mum is now happy about having GNU/Linux installed on her computer (just not right now).

Gotten someone fired for their actions

Gone back to school. Sure, I picked the kids up with Davina loads of times.

Parasailed

Changed your name. It's going to happen.

Petted a cockroach

Eaten fried green tomatoes

Read The Iliad

Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read

Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them.

…and gotten 86’ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you. What does that mean?

Taught yourself an art from scratch. Programming. In all the forms in which I am versed. Apart from the basics of C and C++---that was Bradford College's doing.

Killed and prepared an animal for eating

Apologised to someone years after inflicting the hurt. I believe somebody who bullied me in middle school once told me I used to bully them in first school. At least I hope I apologised.

Skipped all your school reunions

Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language

Been elected to public office

Written your own computer language. I once tried to write a Brainfuck interpreter in Python. It didn't quite work.

Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream. I said before, I don't dream: I do. I had a really good time duriung the last six weeks' holidays: I'd just spent every waking hour of every day writing (code, mostly) and reading and learning in any form. It was the best time I've ever had.

Had to put someone you love into hospice care

Built your own PC from parts

Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you

Had a booth at a street fair

Dyed your hair. Woo, great fun, etc..

Been a DJ

Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal. I never used LiveJournal, DeadJournal was fun though.

Written your own role playing game

Been arrested

2004-11-25T17:19:00.000Z
I love the UBU's email system.

From: Matt Anderson 

…

Many thanks,

Sarah

I later got another email from Matt Anderson from yet another person (who wasn't Matt).

The Web Developers' Toolbar has been updated. Thanks to Neil's sideblog for that one.

I got a nice reply to that Why I'm Right and Will's Not post. From a lecturer, it seems: UniSpeak Lossy.

I was ill yesterday and the day before. I think I decided to sleep from about 6 or 7 last night till 8am this morning (I'm still debating going to Formal Foundations as he's only answering questions about the course). It was great, I was asleep at some point yesterday and we had YAFA. It was so painful being awoken by the bleeding fire alarm then standing outside for ages. I think I'm now well enough to participate in the second SDTD lab test (it's not like it's going to be hard).

Miscrosoft demonstrates the new MSN Search using Firefox (here's the screenshot for those without Javascript). That reminds me of another Firefox bug---it doesn't display Unicode in titles.

While researching for some work, I came across this amazing piece of stupidity:

One of the nice things about PERL is that, because it is a scripting language, people give away source code for their programs.

From http://computer.howstuffworks.com/perl.htm.

For a start, what's with calling Perl `PERL'? It's not an acronym (there are, however, several backronyms). Also, there's lots of Perl that one cannot view the source of and there's lots of other code one can view (i.e. open source code) that isn't Perl. Bloody fools!

A lovely 2am start to the day
2004-11-23T09:02:00.000Z
At 2am today somebody in Bradford Halls set the fire alarm off maliciously. Not impressed. I was fast asleep when it happened meaning I spent about five minutes wandering about my room trying to turn my alarm off (without actually going near my alarm) before I looked up and realised it wasn't my alarm.

All is well because I am famous! All these years...

He mentions that out of the five University of Bradford bloggers, three use their own CMSes. I notice that I'm the only one without my own TLD. Woe is me. Maybe I should finish off that Python CMS I was writing. Or maybe I'll write a new one. It'll have to be one that generates static content as I'm not planning on getting a TLD any time soon.

I was looking at a list of Live CDs I found via an Ask Slashdot. I noticed Ubuntu was on the list. I then looked inside one of my six free Ubuntu CD cases and there's a `live cd' and an `install cd'. Excellent. I'll be trying that out today.

Anyway, I'd better stop dawdling and get ready because I have a long and arduous day of ... collecting results. Okay so maybe it's not long or arduous but I have to be there by 10am.

Many links but not much text.
2004-11-22T19:54:00.000Z
Free video messaging phone: because Santa comes just once a year.

One parent's perspective on DARE.

GPL Revision Coming Soon.

Nintendo DS.

Firefox is now available in en-GB
2004-11-22T01:12:00.000Z
He's going to feel so stupid when he realises he's missed out the DOCTYPE.

I could mention that he's using HTML rather than XHTML (it's not XHTML because there's no XML decleration) but he's free to use whatever language he likes … as long as he doesn't forget the DOCTYPE!

I couldn't believe it: I went to the fabulous Wikipedia and there was no article for DOCTYPE (there is now) but in the article for DTD it was claiming that a DOCTYPE was an abbreviation of Document Type Definition. Crazy! I corrected that now. So it's all okay.

Here's a nice article on BMEZine: Modified Children. Forcing modifications on children is something I've never condoned unless, of course, the aim of the modification is for a good reason (as in the case of my foreskin, but that's a story for another post).

And another excellent article from BMEZine: Pain Sensitization as a Means of Enhancing An Adrenalcortical Response.

There's an interesting editorial (magic no-subscription link) on the New York Times' website about various accusations towards EA Games including the EA Spouse. Rather interesting.

Gah! Blogger is fucked again.

Ah yes, Firefox is now available in en-GB (as opposed to en-US). Neil mentions this. Here's the 1.0 folder. Navigate to the directory of your operating system then to your language/country. I now have it installed. Seeing `Colours' in software is something I'm not used to. I like it.

Neil has an amusing reply. Teehee. Well it made me laugh.

Ah, Blogger is working again.

Stolen Meme
2004-11-21T17:02:00.000Z
Here's a nice questionnaire I stole from Neil. I don't like stealing Neil's XHTML as he uses some depricated elements that I don't use. But it's not so bad when you can :% s/<b>/<strong>/ and :% s/<\/b>/<\/strong>/ in VIM. Which reminds me, I'm in the middle of writing myself some convenience functions in my .vimrc to do what xmagic does on the pages on South Square's site.

Layer one

Name: Tom.

Birth date: 1986-02-19.

Birthplace: Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK.

Current Location: As above.

Eye Color: Brown.

Hair Color: Brown.

Height: No idea.

Righty or Lefty: Righty. I have been accused of being left-handed for using my pointing device with my left hand but I had entirely right-handed reasons for this (i.e. right hand on keyboard while using pointing device).

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius or Pices depending on the calendar. It don't matter, of course.

Layer two

Your heritage: English as far as I can tell.

The shoes you wore today: The usual---my trainers (the only shoes I wear on a regular basis).

Your weakness: Anxiety disorders; but they're getting easier to deal with.

Your fears: Dead things.

Your perfect pizza: Vegan and yummy.

Goal you’d like to achieve: Re-write my XHTML preprocessor some day and maybe make it more generally useful and turn it into something that's useful for more people than just me.

Layer three

Your most overused phrase on AIM: I don't use AIM.

Your first waking thoughts: “I don't want to wake up.”

Your best physical feature: My incredibly sexy septum piercing.

Your most missed memory: Hmm.

Layer four

Pepsi or Coke: I'd prefer a glass of water.

McDonald’s or Burger King: I used to like Burger King and a boycott McDonald's so neither.

Single or group dates: Dates are yummy and I've never been on one.

Adidas or Nike: I'll have to say neither but my trainers are Adidas-branded.

Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Nestea, it seems, is owned by Nesles or Neslé (whom I boycott) but Lipton Ice Tea is reasonably nice.

Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate is good. Shame there's so little nice vegan chocolate.

Cappuccino or coffee: Neither.

Layer five

Smoke: Nope.

Cuss: Indeedy (see previous post :-).

Sing: I sing along to nice music but that's it.

Take a shower everyday: Yes.

Do you think you’ve been in love: Not romantic love, no.

Want to go to college: No. University's good enough for me.

Liked high school: Upper school wasn't that fun; the constant homework depressed me.

Want to get married: I will never marry. A civil partnership could be a good idea though---still, it's kind of unlikely.

Believe in yourself: Yes, I do.

Get motion sickness: Only when reading on a car or bus.

Think you’re attractive: Yes. But my body could certainly do with a few more modifications.

Think you’re a health freak: No, I think I'm perfectly reasonable in wanting to be healthy.

Get along with your parent(s): Yeah, I just had lunch with my parent.

Like thunderstorms: Yeah.

Play an instrument: No.

Layer six

In the past month:

Drank alcohol: No.

Smoked: No.

Done a drug: No.

Made Out: No.

Gone on a date: No.

Gone to the mall: No.

Eaten an entire box of Oreos: No.

Eaten sushi: No.

Been on stage: No.

Been dumped: No.

Gone skating: No.

Made homemade cookies: No.

Dyed your hair: No.

Stolen Anything: No.

Layer seven

Ever:

Played a game that required removal of clothing: Yes. Strip blackjack … in the Sixth Form common room. We didn't get very far though.

If so, was it mixed company: The game had female and male players, not that it makes any difference.

Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: Yes.

Been caught ‘doing something’: That's rather vague.

Been called a tease: Nope.

Gotten beaten up: No. I can't see why not though, I've been openly bisexual since at some point during my GCSEs. But then I was (and still am) a pacifist and I've understood the basics of behaviour modification (i.e. ignoring people to extinguish behaviour) for a long time.

Shoplifted: No.

Changed who you were to fit in: Nope.

Layer eight

Age you hope to be married: I will never marry.

Numbers and Names of Children: I'd love to have two children of relatively similar ages at some point. I've considered Holly or Elizabeth as names for my future children but I don't want to give them the same name as me if I ever change my name and Holly's a name I'd like. If I adopted kids (a possibility) they'd have their own names already.

Describe your Dream Wedding: Let's see. I'd be there, my partner(s) would be there. There'd be a registrar and there'd probably be friends who could double-up as witnesses. Beyond that I couldn't tell you.

How do you want to die: I've not really thought about that yet. But I'd like to be awake to experience it.

Where you want to go to college: I wouldn't mind learning a language at Bradford College. I'll have a look in the catalogue next year---I doubt they'll have Esperanto but they might have Spanish or Finnish.

What do you want to be when you grow up: Prettier. I might need some money for that though, so I'd like to be employed when I grow up too. Programming would be an ideal job, however I haven't yet identified an ideal field---I'm very interested in web design (including static markup, CGI, accessibility, usability, etc.) at the moment.

What country would you most like to visit: I have an interest in spending a year of my course (or my year out in industry placement) in a northern European country such as Finland or Sweden.

Layer nine

Number of drugs taken illegally: Two or three.

Number of people I could trust with my life: One or two.

Number of CDs that I own: I'd say around a hundred. That's including audio and software disks.

Number of piercings: Six. My reverse prince albert had to be retired to make space for my stretched prince albert, unfortunately. Once my prince albert is adequitely-sized I may get my reverse prince albert back and start stretching that (it's been out for several weeks and it's still not closed up---always a good sign).

Number of tattoos: None yet.

Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper? : Probably about once.

Number of scars on my body: One on my forehead.

Number of things in my past that I regret: Several.

Reply to Will
2004-11-21T13:39:00.000Z
This post is in response to Will’s comment to a previous post.

Will-

Hello.

Maybe being a student is not a profession, but, if anything I would expect you, me, and everybody else to act like an *adult*. Saying this may queue up another argument from you on what being adult means, but, in general, the university expects you to act in a certain way. You’ve agreed to come to university, you have agreed to take part in a course, to put the time in, to look after yourself in an adult manner.

You’re right. I’ve never seen a distinct line between this so-called adult behaviour and so-called childish behaviour. I tend to behave as I feel—I do, however, see a distinction between being serious and having fun. I tend to the fun side of the serious/fun line. Maybe that means I do things ‘wrong' according to some social norms but who cares?

I wouldn’t expect you to run through the library screaming and ripping books off the shelf. Yet, you somehow think it is a good think to pepper your code with obscenities, which, I am sure would amuse a small child.

The book asked for an error message and I gave it one. It could have been a good idea to replace the place-holder error message with something that made more sense. But it was submitted over a week ago. I cannot change the past and I’m not planning on trying. Maybe if I was overly-serious about my education I’d care but I don't.

And yes, it comes down to me branding you a child, since you seem happy enough to parade your ‘I am right and you are wrong’ over your public blog.

Have you read any more of my blog? You’ll notice I don’t have a particularly serious (or ‘adult') style of writing so it's no literary diversion for me.

I can imagine you getting upset if someone else messed with your user area, or starting shouting out in a lecture, or any one of a thousand childish things that a fair section of our course are likely to do.

Look at yourself objectively and see if you are always ‘right’.

I may spend all day having fun (some days) but I’m not dim. Introspection cannever be objective. And besides, as far as I can tell I’m not always right. I never said I was always right. In case you hadn't noticed, the title included a small amount of sarcasm.

Maybe think that, at the moment, you are being taught a single path of programming. Do you know how it changes, how the lectures will change in the future? Have you even considered teaching yourself a different language, a different method of programming? Even offering to show it to your classmates?

I do not know how the lectures change in the future. But considering we’re being taught ‘object-orientated programming’ I doubt we'll be taught procedural programming in any great capacity. Why yes, I learnt most of the languages I know myself and I paid for my C lessons out of my own pocket (until I was reembursed by my school) because, for some reason, under-sixteens don't get free education and over-sixteens do (i.e. learning C and C++ at about 14/15 cost my school money and learning BSL and Mendhi at 16/17 cost my LEA money). And of course I've tried different methods—OO, procedural, declerative. All very fun. Teaching other people sounds interesting. Fancy learning XHTML/CSS?

As, if you only spent the time in labs and lectures to learn java, you would drop out of the course. You are expected to learn in your own time, which, I suggest you do, rather than spending it bitching about something you will never try to change.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on being lazy (at least not destructively lazy). I know a lot of Java syntax already through experience with other C/C++-like languages and I know a lot of the philosophy and jargon behind OO.

Stand up and do something, with your own education, or with the course itself. Make a proposal to the department that they should change the course to include different methods and classes. Do something rather than bitching and whining to me and everybody else in earshot that you do not like what is happening and it all sucks, as, and this comes back to my original point, in the end it just makes you look like a spoilt child throwing toys out of your pram.

I do do things. I spent the entire six weeks holidays doing very exciting things (i.e. reading The Art of Unix Programming, learning Python, webmastering South Square Centre’s website). I have no idea how to make a proposal to the department. I showed an interest in going to this SSLC and seeing what happened but you had no intention of letting me. You’re the SSLC class representative—surely it's your job to talk to the department?

That was fun.

What did we learn today?

I cannot time-travel.

It could have been a good idea to change the error message but, coming to my previous point, I cannot traverse the chronological dimension so there would be no great benefit gained from worrying about it now.

I am not destructively lazy when it comes to my education. I take great pride in learning more than I’m taught.

Giant space pandas made of carbon nanotubes will eat the world.

Google Watch
2004-11-21T13:22:00.000Z
I found an interesting website when searching for `google watch' (I typed this into the address bar in Firefox thinking it would give me an `I'm Feeling Lucky' Google result. Seems there's a quicksearch that goes by the name of `google' so I got results for `watch'. I found a page about Jew Watch, Google, and Search Engine Optimization. It's about how Jew Watch appears first in a Google search for Jew (it now appears second after Wikipedia's article).

In the end I found Google Watch. I then found Google Watch Watch.

2004-11-20T21:02:00.000Z
Nursery rhymes expose children to far more violent incidents than an average evening watching TV, researchers say.

Lee Miller, of the charity Young Minds, said the most important factor determining the behavioural development of children was their relationship with the key adults in their life.

I'm glad somebody decided to make a study about that. Maybe morons will stop and think before they call for things to be banned in future. I've always thought Goosey Goosey Gander to be overly racist and violent (somebody being thrown down the stairs for not praying) and Mary Mary Quite Contrary is just mean (making fun of somebody for having lots of miscariages).

NO spoilers about Halo 2 follow (unless you call vehicle and weapon systems as spoilable---definately no story spoilers).

I returned Animal Crossing and got Halo 2 yesterday. I also got my Xbox from home. It's great fun. The weapons system is greatly improved (i.e. dual-weilding some guns), the vehicles have some improvements (i.e. boost function for Covenant vehicles and more Covenant vehicles) and some crappyness (colliding vehicles bang rather than bounce---more realistic but less fun ... if a Ghost can be considered to be realistic), you can play as an elite in multiplayer. Anybody is invited to my room to play Halo 2 with me. Cooperative (multiplayer campaign) is so fun. But then so is campaign. The levels seem to be smaller in Halo 2---each map in campaign has several levels---a sensible choice I believe. The level design seems rather different to Halo 1's levels---not quite sure why, but I get the feeling Halo 2's levels are more built-up and cramped.

I recieved six disks of Ubuntu Linux when I visited Davina last night. I ordered them at least a month or two ago when they were giving them away free---a fair time to wait considering they were free and they're well-packaged. If anybody would like one...

Bill Gates is more popular than Jesus Christ.

Oddly Gates (2nd) outscored Jesus Christ (5th) as the person most requested on a firm's financial board behind top choice former GE chairman Jack Welch.

I think Jesus Christ was on the `fantasy' version of the question of who businesspeople wanted on their boards and Bill Gates wasn't. So the two results aren't directly comparable.

I love people who can't spell ... or punctuate ... or use grammar ... or make any sense in the process.

Don't fret Will, I haven't forgotten you. I'm thinking about my reply.

I'm a 1950s Geek
2004-11-18T23:42:00.000Z
I'm a 1950s Geek

You're smart... and also slightly maniacal. There's just no hiding plots for world domination, sorry.

Found that via Neil, who makes a mention of Bradford's lovely .

I may or may not have mentioned that I got Animal Crossing the other day. Anyway. It's a very nice game... yet I feel the real time aspect (i.e. it's 2004-11-18 in real life and it's 2004-11-18 in the game) is slightly limiting. Most games can be played for hours on end and one gets somewhere based on how long one plays for. In Animal Crossing days progress at the speed of one day per day. This means that if I feel like playing for three hours I will be disappointed when I've spent half an hour playing and I've done everything interesting there is to do (one can always collect shells). Bah! It's a good game but I'm regretting buying it. I'm going to get the rest of my GCN games when I go home next---maybe I'll try to get into Metroid Prime again (not likely---damn save points) or finish off Luigi's Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine.

Why I'm right and Will's not
2004-11-18T22:20:00.000Z
Will (uni rather than Odd) was complaing at me today about that piece of shite---I mean Java---I submitted the other day which included some swearing. He told me that it wasn't `professional' and that I may offend Dr. Rod and as a result he may give me zero.

The exercise said to include an error message for something so I wrote down the first thing that came into my head.

Oh FUCK! What the fuck has gone wrong? Did you enter less than three digits? You complete FUCK!\nDo you know what's going to happen now? Do you? Did you even think before you entered that data? Did you? Did you? Do it again! NOW!\nI should segfault right now. Yeah, I'd do it.\nIf you do it once more I'll segfault; I'm warning you.

I removed the bit about segfaulting from the final piece I submitted (I never found out how to send SIGSEGV to the process in Java).

Why is Will wrong and I'm right? Well... (Balamory hands)

He says it's unprofessional to have `offensive' things in your code. But CS student isn't exactly a profession is it. No. So I don't need to be professional (whatever that means).

Also, the code is just a simple thing that doesn't need real error messages. If I was coding a complicated project (i.e. not one that tells you exactly how to do it).

I really don't care if they complain at me for swearing in code. I care more that we're being taught a single paridgm of programming when there are other paridgms. I care more about the fact that the lecturer was too lazy to set us a piece of real coursework (which is what it is) and simply telling us to do an exercise out of the book. I'm more concerned that in SDTD (a different subject) we'll be learning UML rather than a real thing (personally, I believe UML to be included in SDTD soley because the PHBs like it).

2004-11-18T01:19:00.000Z
PI want compulsary flashes on camera phones (Slashdot story).

There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea.

The technological reasons: it will drain the battery, the image quality may be reduced with a flash (i.e. in bright conditions or when darkness is required).

The social issues: it will annoy people (especially if it's a dark place).

That's about it. I don't see what the problem is. Anyway, if somebody is in public they're already giving up any privacy they may otherwise have. Also, why are phone cameras being singled out anyway? There are smaller and more descrete cameras.

2004-11-15T09:30:00.000Z
Firefox and Amazon don't seem to be getting on---``Firefox and www.amazon.co.uk cannot communicate securely because they have no common encryption algorithms.''---As far as searches get me, it seems other people have been having problems with this. I'll either have to roll back to my 0.8 (?) copy I have which I downloaded for the SVG support or get a more recent build (I'd get the latest source from CVS but it would never work in a million years).

There is no fork, still
2004-11-14T01:57:00.000Z
Here's one for those who say Linux is only more secure because it's not as popular: Linux and Malware, or Why you don't run as root.

Here's a new Flickr meme: What's In Your Bag. I haven't contributed.

I still have:

No fork,

No plate,

No soy milk.

Why I hate BAF
2004-11-13T20:00:00.000Z
Why I hate BAF (Bradford Animation Festival).

As opposed to the system last year, somebody at BAF decided it would be a good idea to make people queue for tickets at 10am every morning rather than last year where one went to an event and queued for it. As a result of this year's system I only saw three events at BAF---I must have seen at least 10 last year. I missed Friday because I had a busy day. It seems that, on Friday, posters had been put up stating that on Saturday no tickets would be issued.

Davina called somebody earlier and asked if I could reserve a ticket for the BAF Awards. They said to go at 6.30pm and get one (BAF Awards being shown at 8pm). I went at 6:30pm and saw the signs. I carried on and ased Adam Pugh, festival director, for a ticket. The signs were correct. This annoyed me greatly.

That is the story of why I am not going to the BAF Awards or any future BAF. I now hate BAF.

As an aside: it must have been several years since I last spelt the word `queue' correctly. It's such a bad word---how can it have a silent `ue' on the end (or in the middle) of it? It makes no sense. In Esperanto there's one spelling and one sound for every letter (except diphongs, maybe). If you hear a word you can spell it and visa-versa. By the way: If anybody is remotely interested in Esperanto talk to me as I have nobody to practice with and there are no courses I've noticed that teach it.

Kulu
2004-11-13T16:45:00.000Z
Turns out Michael Moore, the one responsible for Fahrenheit 9/11 and other such films criticising profiteering and the like, is a hypocritical whore (I think the directory says it all---`moore_loves_drm').

Winamp is dead; long live XMMS. It's a shame, Winamp was one of the better pieces of proprietary crap out there. Just goes to show that you can't rely on proprietary software to stay around.

Gilbert Deya Ministries. This organisation has an interesting past. The get MSIE/NS buttons at the page seemed odd to me. I had the image of `Archbishop' Gilbert Deya proclaiming `God uses Netscape!'

Last night I went to the club known as Kulu. It was fun. It's decorated with UV-reflecting paints and materials. It has a wide range of soft drinks and has some fruit. It's open from 10.15pm till 5.50am, I hear. They play trance all night. There's a `chill-out' room upstairs and a `trancefloor' downstairs. I went with Summer for her birthday party. Emma, Ste and Carney came too. I had water and apples all night, yummy!

I was surprised to see Susan Grant there, with her mum. What a large but inter-connected world we live in. She introduced me to some of her friends. One of them knew me and Davina: Michael, a writer.

In case you're wondering: Kulu is on Preston Street between Thornton Road and Sunbridge Road---it would appear to be a carpet warehouse from the outside. It was £8 on Friday at about 10.15pm.

I found an article via Google News titled ``Google's Gmail Gains Integration With MS Outlook''. It then goes on to say:

Google's still-not-released-to-the-public free Gmail e-mail service adds POP3 support, letting users send and receive messages from Microsoft Outlook clients.

What moron wrote that article?

2004-11-12T07:48:00.000Z
Yesterday I ate:

Malties with very little soy milk,

Foot-long Subway `veggie-max' submarine sandwich.

Today I have:

No plate,

No fork,

No soy milk.

I found this via Neil.

What is your favourite colour?

Purple.

Tell me about a talent or skill you possess, which I've not yet witnessed or discovered.

Since I can't think of a good answer, you'll just have to have the most sexually explicit one that came to mind: I can come out of two holes at once.

What was your favourite subject in school?

Middle school: maths or science; upper school: maths; sixth form: psychology.

What is one place to which you've never been, but you'd like to visit, someday (locally or abroad)?

A Scandanavian country.

Are you a morning person or a night person?

I don't generally have mornings these days. Nights are good.

Are you left-handed or right-handed?

Right-handed. People have thought me to be left-handed in the past for using my pointing device with my left hand (I like to have my right fingers on or near the keyboard) and for using my fork in my right hand (I rarely use a knife when eating).

Did astronauts really land on the moon, or was it all a hoax?

I must admit I did fall for the one-sided `documentary' Fox made on the subject. But the WWW saved me.

Whats in your pocket? (Or if theres nothing in your pocket at present, what sorts of things are most often in your pockets?)

Usually in my pockets: phone, wallet (well, a thing full of cards), lip balm, key/key card, pen (black), bobble (purple).

In 10 years, you see yourself...

Working as a web designer in a pleasant European country (i.e. not the UK).

Theres a power outage, and you dont have a generator. This means no electronics, no computer, no telly, no videos, no stereo and no electric heat or electric kettle; what do you do to keep warm, content and entertained?

Read a paper book.

Whats one thing you cannot bring yourself to eat?

Animal products.

2004-11-10T01:23:00.000Z
Firefox 1.0 is here.

I spent a few hours today trying to build Firefox from source with SVG support. Needless to say, it didn't work.

I browsed onto a website today. It gave me an error message. I emailed the webmaster:

Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 19:44:53 +0000

From: Holizz 

To: web@delicious-monster.com

Subject: Site Requirements

I am using Firefox 1.0 (stable), which was released earlier today.

Un-break your website, please. If I wanted to take more than a glace

at the website I'd use the user-agent switcher. But I don't think a

moron who cares what user agent I use could make a particularly

interesting website. Ever heard of device-independacy?

Fucking moron (I got bored of the sickly politeness).

I found an interesting chart today. It charts various relations between various search engines.

There have been many, many Firefox 1.0-related blog posts today. But only one is a poem.

Teehee.

Owen pointed out to me the most hillarious review of Pulp Fiction (warning: spoilers) ever.

I decided I'd had enough of the non-sensical sign on the shower door---``Shower mind the step''. I added a semi-colon; now it makes sense: ``Shower; mind the step''.

2004-11-08T18:13:00.000Z
Here's a nice new Internet meme for Flickr users: take a `screenshot' of your desktop and give it the tag desktopshowandtell. Here's mine.

I found an interesting GPL project via Neil's World---Markdown. It appears to be a simple wiki-like markup for maximum ease of use. Doubt I'll be switching for South Square Centre. Although Markdown's things can be escaped---that would be a good feature to include when I switch to a nice new Python version.

I went to Allsorts last night. It sucked dick. So I went home at 12.30 am. The music was so bad. I couldn't just sit down and be bored so I had to dance and be bored. There was some dance remix of some Britney Spears song and I found a bit at the end that sounded almost like real music---I was shocked. So never again.

I'll be off to somewhere tonight. Some hotel... In some place... Not sure where. I and Davina are staying there because it's David and Rebecca's double-birthday party tomorrow. I'll be leaving after babysitting tonight---about 7 or 8, maybe. I'll get home on Sunday at some point. I doubt I'll get a chance to do any blogging or anything Internet-related while I'm away. I will, of course, photoblog the weekend. I hope you can all wait to see the pictures. They'll be good. I believe the dress-code is `smart'. I shall be wearing sexy PVC trousers and my mother will be wearing a sari, if I recall correctly---it could have been a shalwar-kameez.

Bah! I'm going to miss Rios this Friday (I went on Wednesday but it's not the same). And I highly doubt it will be worth it. I already agreed to go, so I guess I must. Hopefully there will be some good thing whereever I'm going.

As Owen recommended, I got Neuromancer by William Gibson out of the library as I finished Fundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov.

At the moment, Blogger is fucked. This will probably be posted when I get home on Sunday.

Blogger is still fucked.

I went to the party. I wore my sexy trousers. I wore my sexy black shirt. Davina wore her shulwah.

I met an ex-vivisectioner who now does something to do with databases for GlaxoSmithKliene (vivisectioning bastards). I had a nice chat with him.

A relatively boring party.

I made a new friend today (presumably by the mystic actions of MSN. They're called Demie.

I decided to carry my permanent marker with me as I saw some atrocities of punctuation on some street signs in Newark (that's where the party was, it seems). ``Parking Residents Only''---but what does it mean?

I found a book I want to read---Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Lynne Truss). I may read it after or alongside Neuromancer (William Gibson).

I'm thinking about asking Claire if I can take over the LGBT website.

There are now pictures from David and Rebecca's party uploaded on my Flickr account.

There was a sexy couple at David/Becca's party. One of them had a sexy red and black dress, big sexy boots and a labret piercing. T'other had a dreaded mohecan, crap-looking (at least from my distance) tattoos down his forearms and various other tattoos and a Slipknot badge sown onto his trousers.

New Rock have an inaccessible website.

I discovered that I've already met Niel Turner---he's the third year student who hangs round with John Mellor on open days.

Ah, at last---Blogger seems to be working again.

XML, PVC, and related TLAs
2004-11-03T01:10:00.000Z
I have been shooping in Leeds with Summer. I now have sexy PVC trousers.

Summer has a sexy new skirt too.

I also just updated South Square Centre's website. I decided to represent quotes in the source XML files like in LaTeX---em and en dashes are also like in LaTeX. I think the ellipsis is too. If you're interested, I'll show you the source and the simple Perl hack that is steadily increasing in size. For example, an em dash is represented as `---' (three hyphen-minus signs in a row) in my source---this is then replaced with `&#8212;' (displayed as: —) by my little preprocessor hack known only as xmagic. I'll have to get a better solution one day---like a Python application that actually reads the XML rather than looking for `<body>', etc..

I changed the format of my `Thinking About Learning' coursework for KSCP. It was it DocBook, it is now in LaTeX. DocBook's good---I couldn't get some things to work in it (i.e. MathML). Also, it seems more designed for large projects---I've used LaTeX for writing one-paragraph letters. DocBook won't convert to PS (at least in my current set-up).

2004-11-02T11:27:00.000Z
Said I to the cashier (via email):

I do NOT give my authorisation for this payment. I will never give ANY authorisation for ANY money transaction via email.

Email is inherently insecure.

I will, however, come to the cashier's office (probably today) and give my authorisation.

I want it noted that I will give NO authorisation for payments via email. If you recieve any authorisation from me, my email address has been spoofed.

Since the cashiers don't seem to have a clue, I'll have to teach them a little about security. Maybe I'll spoof an email to them, from some important person at the unievrsity. Telling them to take all their money and stick it somewhere. Then put a little note at the bottom of the email saying it was spoofed.

Thanks for showing an interest in BAF. Due to unforeseen circumstances the

organisers of BAF have raised the price. So the Full Festival Pass should cost

£40 but we can offer you tickets at £30 instead.

For some reason, some random person is emailing Informatics students about BAF. Hah! Lucky my mum got me one before when they were just £30 (I think).

I just got a reply from the cashier:

I'll look forward to seeing you.

Teehee, I like this person.

Anyway, I'm now going to see my friend the cashier. Then on to Leeds where Summer awaits.

Dumb cashiers and dumb terminals
2004-11-02T10:21:00.000Z

[...] I need your authorisation (by return e-mail) to take the following payments from your debit/credit card [...]

What the fuck? Since when was email secure? I am going to have a word with them tomorrow (and give them authorisation to take all my money). That's crazy! They can't really think email is secure, can they?

I was wondering the other week—is the Wikipedia the biggest encyclopaedia? Wikipedia is the largest encyclopaedia.

In other news, I may have solved the .cshrc problem.

if ($?prompt == 1) exec bash;		# Does the prompt variable exist? If it does, this is an interactive prompt and not a shell script - run my favourite shell

if ($TERM == "dumb") exec ~/bin/wm;	# Does the terminal identify it as dumb? If it does, it's probably GDM about to run GNOME - stop and execute my own window manager

I edited that just now. Hopefully it will work. But it may not.

It would seem that Internet Explorer fairs the best when it comes to mangled HTML.

This must be terrible news for any Firefox fan. As everybody knows, Firefox 1.0 will be released on the 9th of November. I wish all Firefox hackers the very best of luck in locating and fixing this bug and any other outstanding bugs before the 1.0 deadline.

Not more Unicode!
2004-11-01T10:32:00.000Z
After my big article on Unicode, etc., in (X)HTML, I find an Introduction to Unicode on Newsforge today (yes, I posted the comment `Excellent Introduction').

If using Unicode sounds appealing, come back tomorrow to learn how to deploy Unicode in Linux.

Ooo, even better!

Oh crap. I'm reading A List Apart. This would be okay if I was a) not insanely interested in web standards and accessibility and b) if I didn't have lectures in thirty minutes.

I'll have to read it later - i.e. after lectures. If I read it between lectures I'd miss the later lectures (or just turn up late). Damn the Internet, damn it all! All conspiring to lead me astray!

Unicode madness
2004-11-01T01:47:00.000Z
Taking into account the unexpected temporal shift in the early hours of the morning (the clocks going back), I woke up in the afternoon today.

I was looking at Unicode.org and I discovered how to achieve matched “double” and ‘single quotes’.

Buncey will be happy.

Here's a cute little asterism for Buncey: ⁂

There is a set of code charts, including one for General Punctuation (PDF). Take the hexadecimal number under the character you would like and insert it between &#x (the `#' (hash or `pound sign') denotes a numerical rather than a worded escape code, and the `x' denotes hexadecimal as opposed to decimal notaion) and ;.

For example, &#x2020 gives the exotic † (dagger). However, &dagger; also produces a †.

I advised Buncey to use ` (backquote) and ' (single quote) for opening and closing quotes, respectively. This annoyed Buncey as the ` (backquote) is an opening quote, yet the ' (single quote) is not a closing quote - simply a single quote. I found the solution - so he'll be happy. I believe the complain originated with his dislike of Microsoft Word's problematic `smart-quotes'.

For those who aren't sure what Microsoft's smart quotes are:

For some unknown reason (well, one can presume it was part of its Embrace and extend strategy), Microsoft decided to use its own set of opening and closing quotes (i.e. real quotes as opposed to ` (backquote) and ' (single quote)). The problem was that there were already quote symbols in Unicode, which is a character set. As a result most browsers and operating systems, other than Microsoft's, display Microsoft's smart quotes very poorly (see example from PHP Princess - see related links).

Related Links:

Demoroniser manual page (a Perl application to remove Microsoft's smart quotes)

A short discussion on writing a PHP application to remove smart quotes

Fix Microsoft Smart Quotes (I couldn't immediately find a page to test it on)

Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML (interesting discussion on best practices on representing quotes in various documents) - read this for interesting bits I missed out

The Trouble With EM n EN (and Other Shady Characters) (excellent article regarding the correct use of em and en dashes and other things - however, it fails to take into account the fact that not everybody uses a standard US keyboard: ``grave accents-that character on the tilde key'')

This is probably a crappy article as I moved all over the place while writing. And now that I discover why I should use deciamal notation for Unicode (see Curling Quotes in Related Links) after I've gone on to explain how to do it in hexadecimal. Bah! I'm not editing this anymore as I just want to write down the usage of the quotes and the dashes before I go to bed. Web standards and related issues is a very interesting field. But doing big edits to already written blog posts isn't my thing.

I'll just mention:

“ doubles ” (&#8220; and &8221;)

‘ singles ’ (&#8216; and &8217;)

2004-10-31T01:12:00.000Z
I heard about somebody being deported from the LGBT society on Thursday. And now I found a post about it (the only news I found regarding it online): Life, the universe and immigration. Follow-up post.

Sitescore. South Square Centre got 6.5 overall. South Square Centre's scores.

I'm very proud of the 10.0 for accessibility and the 9.0 for design is nice.

I'm not sure how valid I'd say this scoring system is. I tend to keep the number of images as low as possible and do as much styling as possible in CSS. Being a dial-up user for six years up until less than a week ago - I know the value of image-sparse web pages.

Last night was fun. Well, Friday night. Summer, somehow, convinced Jen to come out even though she had to be on a train the following day - going home. She came out and, surprisingly, she drank alcohol. Teehee, I can add ``seeing Jen drunk'' to my CV now.

Yay, questionnaire!
2004-10-30T23:38:00.000+01:00

What is your Full Name?

Tom Malcolm John Adams

What color pants are you wearing right now?

Purple pants! Also white pants. The former being trousers and the latter being briefs.

What are you listening to right now?

Cradle of Filth - Of Dark Blood and Fucking

What was the last thing you ate?

Morrissons Bettabuy Fruit Malt Loaf

If you were a crayon what colour would you be?

Purple.

How is the weather right now?

I can't see, it's too dark.

Last person you talked to on the phone?

That would be Summer.

First thing you notice about the opposite sex?

What a badly-worded question! In fact, it's not even a question, just a statement with a question mark.

Do you like the person who sent this to you (or posted it)?

I'm not sure. I don't really know him - I just read his blog as he goes to the same university as me.

How are you today?

I'm good right now. I felt a bit weird earlier on though. Bit of a strange day.

Favorite Drink?

Robinsons Fruit and Barley squash - usually Summer Fruits or Apple and Blackcurrnt - but at the moment I have Strawberry and Kiwi.

Favorite Alcohol?

Considering I'm sXe, I don't have any great preference.

Favorite Sports?

The `realising you've spent too long coding/blogging before lectures and now you're late' decatholon.

Hair Color:

Naturally dark brown, and partially peroxidified (with lovely long roots).

Eye colour:

Brown.

Do you wear contacts?

No. I've been thinking about trying them when I go to the opticians next.

Siblings:

Two step siblings.

Favorite Month:

Uhh, this one - now is in this month and now is the best time ever.

Favorite Food:

Hmm. I very much like apples, but it's annoying when you buy a 7-pack and forget all about them for a week. Food that keeps is good. Like pasta or tofu.

Last Movie you watched:

Blimey. I'm not sure.

Favorite Day of the Year:

Whatever day now falls upon, it's usually today. As I say, I like now.

Are you too shy to ask someone out?

Ask? It usually just happens.

Summer or winter?

I love Summer, and she knows I do.

Chocolate or Vanilla?

I'll have to say vegan chocolate.

Do you want your friends to write back?

I don't mind. I just like doing questionnaires.

Who is most likely to respond?

No idea. Buncey might. He reads my blog, I think.

Who is least likely to respond?

I couldn't possibly say.

Favorite card game:

104-card Pickup (every game is better with two decks).

What did you do last night?

I went to Rios with Summer, Will, John and Jen.

Favorite Smells:

Piercing gunk smells nice.

Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

Not last time I tried.

What's the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?

Oh no, I fell short of midday.

I am elite hacker!
2004-10-30T23:08:00.000+01:00
1 4m 1337 h4x0rz!!!!

I downloaded the Gmail Notifier extension. Oh how terrible, it doesn't work with Firefox 1.0RC1!

Here is what I did (it was very simple, really):

unzip gm-notifier-0_3_3.xpi

Then I explored the source a little

I then realised the only thing I needed to change was the version of Firefox it would install to

Notice the lines in install.rdf:

		0.10

		0.8

If you want to install it on Firefox 1.0 RC1, simply change the 0.10 (1.0PR) to 1.0

Then, in the gm-notifier directory: zip -r gm-notifier-0_3_3_1.jar; mv gm-notifier-0_3_3_1.xpi

I added the _1 to distinguish between the vanilla 0.3.3 and my hacked version

It appears to work. But don't come crying to me if you've followed my advice.

Hooray for Firefox.

I want that tattoo.

So funny it's almost good.

I want contacts like those.

Doh!

Sexy avatars.

My MSN nick is ``9th November. The web will never be the same.''

I was searching b3ta for Firefox pictures (yes, I know - no, only a couple of hours) and I found this.

I got the ChatZilla extension for Firefox the other day. It's cool. And it catches any links with the irc scheme. For example, I discovered this lovely IRC server running on port 9000 the other day: cookie.sorcery.net, it's cool.

2004-10-29T09:07:00.000+01:00
I heard some interesting news at LGBT last night. I also found a useful copy on Indymedia. Some `reggae star' who advocates ``shooting queers'' is going on a UK tour in November and people are going to try and get it cancelled. For any Bradfordians, Sizzla Kalonji is playing at the Town and Country Club on the 4^th November. I hear there's a protest planned (which I'm not going to as I don't want to die). There are contact details for all the locations where he's playing on his UK tour in the article. Seems like the Town and Country Club manager is the same as the Rios manager: paul-at-bradfordrio-dot-com. So hopefully that will not happen.

Here's my email:

Dear Paul,

I have heard that Sizzla Kalonji shall be playing at the Town and Country Club. I urge you not to let this artist play at the Town and Country Club as he advocates the killing of homosexuals. If not for any other reason - don't let him play because incitement to murder is illegal and the reputation of the Town and Country Club will suffer as a result.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Adams

In other news, I recieved an email saying that somebody has left their portable hard drive in one of the labs. Hehehe. My flash disk is nice and safe.

Today I have HCI, no KSCP but something in the library, and SDP. No babysitting, but Rios.

Goodbye for now.

2004-10-28T23:08:00.000+01:00
I was just thinking of that athlete who claimed the drugs that he had in his body were from a nasal spray thing for a cold or something. The stance that whoever it is that tests the athletes takes is that each athlete is responsible for what's found in their body. Could this guy not read some fucking ingredients? I do it almost every day - I'm responsible for what goes into my body and I answer to me. So if I decide to eat meat (ick) I can. This guy knew he would be disqualified if he took any banned drugs - so if he was telling the truth, he's a complete moron. If he was lying, he's also a moron for thinking he wouldn't be found-out.

Teehee, Suicide Girls (not safe if you're at work or have a prudish parent looking over your shoulder) gave me an idea for when I have to be `posh' at David (uncle) and Rebecca's (cousin) party. A USB tie (also not work-/evil parent-safe)! Like RMS's power tie but more modern.

I got some free goodies from The Times. I just gave them some of my details, fake phone number, etc. I got some Xstals with the goodie bag. They're little sweets with lots of glucose, guarana and caffine in them. I had one. They taste kind of nice. Jen would love them. Jen gets high on coke and J2O and oxygen.

I imagine with all the fire alarms we have here, there could be massive potential for bash.org quotes.

 ok fire alarm is over

 I"M ALIVE!!!!

 so what I type to view my kernal???

 BRB, the dorm is on fire.

Wow, I saw a poster on the window at my flat. Turns out that my flat has a blog. That's quite cool.

2004-10-27T18:21:00.000+01:00
Forget the broadband!

Toast is the real reason I moved! Delicious!

Yeah, I'm now in Bradford Halls, by the way. I have broadband. In six minutes, I will have completed my first apt-get upgrade. 340MB in 1½ hours!

I tested GDM today. I had to switch back to KDM because I couldn't configure GDM to start Fluxbox (I managed to use `Failsafe Xterm' and run Fluxbox from there). So back to KDM.

I'm now using Fluxbox 0.9 with the LintherBrushed theme. It looks like OS X.

I'm currently investigating the blocked ports at the Unievrsity of Bradford's intranet using nc -lp <port> on my machine and telnet <hostname> <port> on the SunOS 5.8 server known as lithium.

Bah! I keep forgetting to copy/paste my blog to Blogger. Anyway, I realised I'd left my wok and chippati pan at Shearbridge Green. I found my chippati pan but my wok was nowhere to be found. I told the people who were in the kicten that I'd moved out and to call me if they see my wok. Theiving Shearbridge Green bastards. I'll have to have pasta and some sauce tonight since I have no wok. I noticed that under my name where everybody had written down their telephone numbers, it said ``(Transvestite!!)'' or something to that effect. I had a feeling the prank calls from `number withheld' had something to do with putting my number on there.

So far I've met three people from my part in Bradford Halls, some guy, some Irish guy and Ben, who is doing some course that has the words `video' and `game' in the title. He described the course as ``like computer science but dumbed-down and with drawing''.

Ah yes, iVillage/iVillage has managed to get a pop-up through Firefox's fantastic defenses. I am now boycotting two websites due to pop-ups - iVillage and Netscape Portal. I love the way they think that since I have a pop-up blocker I must obviously buy things from pop-ups that by-pass my defences. They underestimate my power of boycotting. There's a list of things I boycott on my uni page.

2004-10-23T19:08:00.000+01:00
It gave some error message, or something.

Wardriving just got a whole lot more dangerous.

The page lists 20 examples of simple ideas that have already been granted patents in Europe, such as paying by credit card over the Internet, segmented video-on-demand, tabbed palettes, rebate codes, and ordering via cell phone.

There goes Owen's argument that the patent situation will not become like America's in Europe. Patents are the biggest threat to innovation in software development. Patents only exist to serve big businesses. I'd like to know how 99% of people benefit from patents. They don't, it's only the 1% that are the capitalists behind big businesses.

People often tell me I don't look like a `typical computer person' (I forget the exact wording). I don't think that I don't. In fact Will (uni Will, not the original and best Will) asked me if I was a `hacker type' because of the beard etc. (I am). One day somebody will shout `rms' at me instead of the usual `Jesus'. Then my life shall be complete. I think there are people on my course who wouldn't recignise RMS if he appeared out of nowehere with a butterfly on his head, a recorder in his mouth and promptly installed GNU/Hurd on their PC. Probably the same people who think `Java 2' (Java 1.2 onwards, I believe) is object orientated and Java 1 isn't.

I got a letter yesterday - I'm moving! (No, I don't know where to). I'm getting broadband, finally! I've been on dial-up for 6 years. Finally!

Rios was kind of weird last night.

It was quite fun though. Some moron walked straight into me with a hard part of their body cutting me in the eyebrow with my glasses, bending my glasses and throwing them on the floor in the process. My glasses kept falling off (before and after the person walked into me). I need some new ones, these are about two years old. I might get contacts too. Should be fun.

I wonder what I could get pierced next... My last piercing was my septum and that was in June. If I waited until June I could give blood. But I wouldn't wait till June, I also wouldn't give blood to those fucking bigots at the National Blood Service. Hmm, I'm thinking another facial piercing, but what!

I just ordered £20 of jewelry from BME Shop:

Kaos Silic345 5/8

Acrylic Ca087 1ga Flr. Gr

Acrylic Ca085 8ga Dark Bl

Acrylic Ca086 4ga Lite Bl

Acrylic Ca087 3ga Red

This is exactly why I usually keep my curtains shut at night. Now there's a daddy long-legs in my room. And I'm going to have to get rid of it before I go to bed or I won't be able to sleep.

This is so cool: a Lego Rubik's Cube!

I was incredibly healthy today. I had Bombay Mix and breakfast cerial (with soy milk) for lunch.

Bye bye Blogger...?
2004-10-19T16:04:00.000+01:00

There was a fantastic interview with Rob Pike on Slashdot today.

I particularly liked the summary of his feelings on object orientation:

Regardless of what I think, though, OO design is the way people are taught to think about computing these days. I guess that's OK - the work does seem to get done, after all - but I wish the view was a little broader.

It seems the university is teaching object orientated programming as opposed to programming in general because it's a buzzword. They probably have Pointy-Haired Bosses making all the decisions.

Two great articles from BME: But then, what is 'normal' anyway?, Listening to your brain.

Hmm, I was sure I had a driving lesson at 10am. I waited for a while, then I went in and got my hoodie because it was cold and I waited till 10 past. I decided to call him but I don't have his number in my phone and there's no chance I could ever find his card which, I presume, is in my room.

I'd quite like driving to be over soon. Him not being here just drags it on longer. Driving sucks. I do not want to learn. Davina wants me to learn and she wants to give me her car as a graduation present. I don't plan on driving any time soon. In fact I think driving is one of the greatest contributors to the polution of this world.

In Foundation's Edge (not really a spoiler, don't worry), I believe, somebody stated that an overly irradiated planet couldn't possibly be Earth as people couldn't be stupid enough to use nuclear weapons upon themselves.

I finally stretched my septum last night. I made the hard decision of down-sizing my reverse Prince Albert piercing to my smaller ex-nipple rings. It was hurting too much. And the acrylic ring from there is now in my septum.

Now all my piercings are stretched. Hooray!

Today I've been writing a blogging system in Python. I have most of the basic things done and worked out. I just have to finish it off. I don't want to stick with Blogger as it won't let me stop the thing from automatically adding <br /> to the end of each line. And then it puts that all into one line. It's sucky if you want to read the source. And the forced newlines fucks your post up if you're using valid (X)HTML.

The config file is a Python script, teehee. No mini-languages for me (at least until it comes to storing the data). Also, Blogger's templates are big and scary and bloated. I want to create my own incredibly simple XHTML templates and then use a stylesheet to do all the prettyness. Speaking of, South Square Centre now has a `Gothic' stylesheet. Sooo many stylesheets.

The reasons for sticking with Blogger include the fact that Blogger gives me a lot of space to blog on, the only other space I have available is my uni page and it's only 500KB.

I think freedom is better. I'll just have to add a function to the blogging system to specify the maximum size I can have in my FTP thing. But I'll have no images at all and one stylesheet so my webspace should last.

Java 2 is object orientated!
2004-10-18T17:59:00.000+01:00

Please note: The Plain English Campaign Crystal Mark does not apply to this post.

I revaped the script I have called by KPPP (no, pppd doen't work for some reason) to include my hostname (i.e. maximus00.dial.brad.ac.uk) along with my IP address (i.e. 143.53.235.6) in the page I generate and then FTP up to a page on my student webspace. It's a nice script. Very useful when away from home and I need to ssh in (I know that's insecure from public PCs but I never login as root remotely).

So yeah, last night I took my fried Xbox controller apart. I think me and Will shall do some soldering one day. I found some helpful documentation on modifying an Xbox controller. Adding two USB females to an Xbox contoller, And the same again. I'm planning on using the Software Method to get Linux on my Xbox.

Here's what I plan to do:

Attach the wires of a USB male A connector to the wires of the Xbox memory card female's wires and plug the Xbox memory female into the USB of my PC via the USB male. I will then insert the memory card (which may or may not be fried) to my PC via this contraption. If I can mount the device then I shall put the data onto it. If it doesn't mount I may try a different method or get a new card.

Once I have the data on the card, I shall take that to Davina's (as that's where the Xbox is). I shall insert it into a working Xbox controller and make sure the data's there. I shall then copy it to the hard disk for safe-keeping.

I shall then take my Xbox home. I shall rent the game MechAssault as it is needed to load the `save games'. I may need to borrow somebody's TV and computer to telnet the Xbox and get the key for whatever reason I need it and then install Linux. I should then be able to turn the Xbox on and blindly select Linux from the menu and do the rest at home. I expect I shall install Xebian (Xbox-compatible Debian GNU/Linux live/installation distro) at some point later.

Davina suggested looking at Ecover as a source of good washing power/liquid. I looked at their homepage and I'm confronted with a Flash something-or-other which I do not have a plugin for. So I do a Google site-search. And I notice a theme to the URLs, so I try /english/html/ and it doesn't give me the index page or a directory listing, but a `Directory Listing Denied'. So I try index.html and I get an IIS 404 File not found page. The morons had the homepage as main.htm.

Ah yes, the LGBT society is seeing Shark Tale tonight at 8pm at Cineworld (meeting beforehand at 7:30 in the Richmond Foyer).

I posted the following in response to an article:

Personally, I couldn't care what proprietary rubbish Google may or may not make next as I use Free Software exclusively. I'd quite like to know which project from Google Labs will become open source first. Most of them, however, seem to rely on Google's massive databases and are, therefore, not likely to become open source. I'd also quite like to see their services use standards-complaiant code. They don't event have html tags in most of their pages.

P.S. to previous commenter, Julian: a new IM protocol will not stop people using MSN. When MSN changed its protocols and Kopete wouldn't work with MSN, I tried to convert people to Jabber but I only managed to coerse one of my friends into using it. (L)users don't know what's good for them. They don't see that they're being locked in.

Ah yes, I found a really cool thing the other day. The Mozilla Amazon Browser. You'll need an XUL browser such as Firefox or Mozilla. It's just an XUL-based interface to Amazon. It's cool and it seems to do the main Amazon sites (.co.uk, .com, etc.). It's a fantastic application of an XUL-based application that doesn't even have to be installed. As I've been saying, Firefox (/Mozilla) is the new Emacs (in the sense that they have both become a platform in themselves - i.e. you can run mail-readers inside Emacs and the such-like). At the moment, the majority of Firefox extensions are based upon WWW applicatons as I expect Emacs major modes will have started out as mainly for text-editing purposes. I want a NetHack interface for Firefox!

I talked to Fatima for the first time in a long time the other day. I think she's completing her A-levels and then I'm not sure. But from then on the conversation concisted of a pattern along the lines of <fatima> I'm trying to install Yahoo messenger, how do I do such-and-such? <me> No idea. I haven't talked to her since probably May or maybe before that and all she can talk to me about is her crappy computer. She just wanted me to fix her computer, basically. Nice to see you too. I certainly need a `No, I will not fix your computer' T-shirt.

And not to forget the people behind me in Software Development (Programming). Dr Rod Fretwell explained that we'd be using J2SE (a misleading name as Java is only version 1.5 at the moment). So there were people in the row behind me talking. I paraphrase:

 What's the difference between Java 1 and Java 2?

 Java 2 is object orientated.

These are the type of people who think:

'i like to surf the internet and chat on aim to all my friends all the time so im good with computers and im good at that microsoft wordart. mom said i should go to computer school like you!'

Teehee, I love quizzes.

You are .doc

You change from year to year, just to make things tough on your competition. Only your creator really has a handle on you.

Lalala
2004-10-17T22:57:00.001+01:00
Yesterday I ordered £88 worth of books, then cancelled £30 worth of books after discovering one of them wouldn't be worth its weight in paperweights (Objects First With Java: A Practical Introduction to BlueJ).

I ended up ordering:

Python Pocket Reference (because I enjoyed the Perl Pocket Reference so much) - not a course text.

The Internet Book - course text for Introduction to Web Technologies (second semester).

Computers, from Logic to Architecture - course text for Computer Architecture and Systems Software.

I considered buying UML something for next semester. But I'll see if we actually need it. The BlueJ book was `essential', but it doesn't look like it will be.

Oh yes, yesterday's lectures were semi-fun. Foundations of HCI was interesting. We learnt a little about Earcons and Auditory Icons and other fun things. KSCP was boring as ever. Then after a three hour break we had tutorial. The discussion question was something about whether or not students of all disciplines ought to have at least one mandatory IT-related course. I was the odd one out being stubborn in my insistance that they should not, they should, instead have an optional module teaching computing skills related to their course (i.e. typesetting or word-processing for writing student, CGI for art students). The guy next to me said people should be taught `Word' (moron). My logic was that if they already know how to use a computer, a mandatory course on it would bore them and thus detract from their studies. All of the other people (the other four in the tutorial group and the tutor) agreed that they should have a mandatory course and that everybody needs to know how to use computers (morons). I think it's up to the person as to whether or not to learn to use a computer. If I feel a gap in my knowledge (I think Vygotski had a useful term to describe this, its name escapes me) I will seek to fill the gap. I believe the majority of undergraduates will be capable of doing this. People should not be forced into learning to use computers in the way that programmers should not be forced into using object orientation when it is not appropriate (hint: I'm talking about Java).

Our last lecture was Software Development (Programming). Dr. Rod Fretwell demonstrated drawing a picture using BlueJ. To the best of my intuition, it would appear he was using BlueJ to simply create instances of classes and the project he was using had some classes relating to shapes that could be drawn to a canvas. He'd create an instance of, say, Circle and then call circle_1.makeVisible() (which is a badly named method as it draws the object). So he drew a picture of a yellow sun on a blue sky (very inefficiently). I really don't think it was a good way to teach a programming language. Maybe it teaches a bit about object orientation but that's irrelevant.

Then I went off to Davina's. I read a bit of The Essence of Human-Computer Interaction, which was interesting. It said some interesting things about novices (i.e. they have to be told constantly what's going on or they'll panic and they have to be given many options to cancel what they're doing otherwise they'll think they'll do something wrong that they can't undo).

I went to Rios last night, it was very fun. Summer noticed another Gorgeous Guy. It was discovered that he was a bit of an idiot, but he was funny and Summer got to touch his hair (which resembled Gorgeous Guy's hair).

The people in my blog are annoying. I keep going downstairs to make some food and I find a part of the cooker is on. Morons.

a BMI less than 18.5 is underweight and may indicate malnutrition, an eating disorder, or other health problem [...] These range boundaries apply to adults over 20 years of age.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index

So I have two years to gain at least 0.5 BMI to not be underweight, or gain 2 BMI to have an ideal BMI.

I changed my theme in Fluxbox today. From Operation to Twice. It's all red and dark grey. I made a `Gothic' stylesheet inspired by Twice for South Square Centre today. South Square Centre is going to have so many stylesheets. By the time the PHB switches to a better browser, there'll be, like, a hundred.

I got the BlueJ book today... out of the library. I installed BlueJ in my userspace at school (it's proprietary so it shaln't touch my computer) and it sucks. What's the point of it? How is it teaching me anything, or anybody else who already understands the OO paridigm in programming? The book says it isn't about BlueJ, it's about programming. I don't need it, it's not `essential reading'.

It's like something out of Donnie Darko.

I decided that the software modification must be done to my Xbox (it's sitting at Davina's, unused and unloved). I've been pulling my broken Xbox controller apart all night. I shall get my soldering iron from Davina's on tuesday, probably and my wire-cutters too. I'll wait to get my Xbox. I could take the memory card home when it's got the data on and take the MechAssault game and do the mod at home and take my Xbox and a controller home with me one it's modded as I think I can do most of it from my computer without seeing the TV output of the Xbox.

2004-10-17T22:57:00.000+01:00

Ethernet!
2004-10-15T01:19:00.000+01:00
By Space, the Foundation series just keeps getting better!

I am now, officially, in love with Asimov.

Hmm, the Netscape Portal managed to induce a pop-up on Firefox when I closed the tab. I am not impressed. Also, I removed the Tab-browser Preferences extension and then middle-clicking suddenly started opening links in new windows. And I couldn't find the option anywhere so I had to reenable it. And I can't get links that open in tabs to load in the background. I think tab-browser preferences has fucked-up some chrome. I'm sure a quick mv .firefox .firefox2 and some hasty extention installation should fix it.

That's better.

So anyway, Niall came over with his laptop today and he installed Debian Woody. He installed his network card's driver and, for the first time, I used my ethernet card. It was easy-peasy to set-up. After all that he left and I ran off to driving. Then I ran off to LGBT. Then I ran off home and had tea. Now I'm here. Davina's picking me up any minute now, then I shall go to the pub and buy food after.

Just been to the Blue Boar. Was moderatly ... no, it was very boring actually. I've decided that I don't want to go there more than every other week anymore. I want to go to one of the Bradfordian gay clubs with the LGBT society next week.

I enjoyed tonight so much. For example, Cat went to another room for unknown and reason. She was in the middle of a game of pool with Jim, her younger brother at the time. At some point he was about to cheat so I took the white ball and put it in my pocket. Then when Cat came back she called me something I don't remember, but it was hardly nice. So then later on she went to the toilet and told me not to let Jim cheat. So I encouraged him to cheat. By the time she got back in the room there were no balls left on the table. That was kind of satisfying. But she really pissed me off. I could call her mean things but I won't, even though I feel like it.

So yeah, being there really pisses me off. And if I'm not being pissed off, I'm being bored. They're not boring and I love them all but it's just boring being there. And the other week Cat was saying I've become more annoying since I went to university. And they always complain about my trousers as they happen to have rips just under where my arse is. I'm frustrated.

Damn fucking annoying bastards!

There, I feel better now.

If any of you from the Blue Boar actually read my blog (very doubtful) then I do love you all. I just get frustrated. And spending two and a half hours with you all is something I've started to dred.

So yeah, I'm going to a gay bar in town next week with LGBT (note I got bored of including the acronym tags - I don't care if my blog is inaccessible) if possible, otherwise I shall do something infinately more interesting than spending time at the Blue Boar, like reading. Or sitting on my own doing fuck all.

So yeah, no more than twice a month from now on. Right. Bed time.

AAAAAARGH!
2004-10-13T01:09:00.000+01:00

Which OS are You?

Interlude.

I had fun tonight.

Interlude.

Stuart invited me to Niall's birthdayness at the Courtyard. I went.. but with Jen. And we didn't see them at all. Possibly because we didn't look.

Interlude.

Then we went to see John as Jen had a CD to give back to him. We chatted for a few hours. He gave Super Noodles and hotdogs to Jen. Turns out one of them was vegan. So we shared some Super Noodles at Jen's kitchen and had a nice chat.

Interlude.

I finally convinced her to try some American Style Chip Spice. Then for a completely unrelated reason, she threw me out.

Interlude.

Then I walked home (I managed to get out the door this time). It was drizzling. Mmm, the rain was nice.

XF86Config-4
2004-10-09T13:23:00.000+01:00
I discovered the LGBT society boycotts the blood donation people (finally - it's the National Blood Donation Service). Apparently they ask gay men if they've had anal sex in the past 12 months, but only men. Therefore, homophobic.

Here is the offending question.

Question 11

Are you a man who has had oral or anal sex with another man (even if you used a condom)?

Notice the lack of time limit. If you are a man and have ever had oral or anal sex with another man even if you used a condom (which everybody else says makes things safe), you can never give blood. How rediculous. The NBS is now boycotted in my list of botcotted things.

List of boycotted things:

Nesles (Nesle)

Esso

Bacardi (I now know what they do wrong - they sue Cuban rum producers because Cuban rum is their IP, apparently)

Procter & Gamble

National Blood Service

RIAA (including its members - i.e. a lot of record labels)

Microsoft

SCO (not that they have any products or services - suing Linux-using hackers could be considered a service if you're Microsoft)

McDonalds

BME/Extreme Newsletter #7. Fantastic, I like the girl with the antennai. I also may get the T-shirt (``When pussy cutting is outlawed, only outlaws will cut pussy'').

Google Print have got into DRM. Example. I've read various complains. But some people don't seem to realise that `no right click' scripts can be turned off in Firefox (at least in 1.0PR).

Another interesting article on BME: Extreme Makeunder?

Hmm. Since Google is starting to look more and more evil every day, I think there should be an open source project aimed at cloning Google's search technology. It should run on a typical LAMP. Maybe there could be an organisation set up for the purpose of that, like the Wikimedia foundation, but for searching, rather than Wiki-ing. Maybe people could volunteer disk space using the GFS (Global, rather than Google, File System) or something. Searching/indexing is certainly an interesting field. Maybe I'll write a web-indexing tool using Python and MySQL.

I had a little scare this morning when I booted. My keyboard wouldn't work due to some unforseen mistake in XF86Config-4. I panicked because C-M-F1 wouldn't take me to a virtual terminal (duh). But it was all okay in the end - under the menu selectbox in KDM is an option to go to the VT. So my keyboard worked in there (as it's a VT and not X). Turns out it didn't like having a PS/2 mouse in the ServerLayout section when there wasn't one plugged in. So I got rid of it. Both my pointing devices are in USB ports now (if I'd done that before, all five buttonson my mouse would have worked - and they do now). Now I have all four buttons available on my trackball too. Anybody know about configuring some kind of scroll-wheel emulation in XFree86?

Well, I think I may play with the MySQL interface for Python today.

Botcott the blood-letting people!
2004-10-07T18:42:00.000+01:00
Software patents are a threat to innovation. Fantastic article.

It's a classic but it's still funny: Ed is the standard text editor.

I went to the Fair Trade Cafe yesterday with Davina and today with Will. They do good food. It's now my favourite cafe in Bradford City Centre and my second favourite in Bradford (yes, I am referring to South Square Cafe).

Hmm. I think I should try and put some weight on at some point. Summer's always said I was thin, and my BMI is low (18 if you're interested). The BMI is the one where they compare your weight and height and get some random number - basically I'm tall and thin, comparatively. I don't know how to put weight on though. I eat like three times or more every day yet I'm still thin. And sometimes I feel kind of feint. Maybe it's some vitamin deficiency. Maybe I'll talk to some random doctor at the health centre one day. I should probably get my cholesterol checked too. Davina has high cholesterol for no apparent reason.

I got an email from the BURPS secretary about some blood donation thing in the Basement (I think it's in the Student Union, but I have no idea where). So anyway, disregarding the fact that blood donation is probably outside of the scope of a role playing society, the blood donor people annoy me. I've never got on with them in a way. Back when I was at TGS there was a poster saying `Anybody with a heart can give blood', which is plainly wrong. I always thought of people with AIDS. But of course now I'm the anybody with a heart who can't give blood. You can't have a tattoo or piercing any less than 12 months before giving blood. Why? I can think of hundreds of things more likely to make your blood worthless to the blood sucking bastards (yes, the ones who put needles in your arm and take a pint of your blood). I don't believe they mentioned suspension on the form. Okay, so class it as a form of piercing - there's still scarification, falling over and cutting yourself. I'd say the vast majority of piercing and tattoo studios are very clean. Maybe if you went to a little place where they didn't have a license where the piercer uses needles twice. But not when you go to a bright place with licenses and new needles and stuff like that. Speaking of health and safety, there are Ikea bins in the kitchen that are labelled as `sharps bins' (i.e. broken glass, needles, etc). They don't even have tops on the bins! How useful is that? My piercer has a better bin and it probably didn't cost as much. Pro Body has a big tub with a lid on and a small hole to put the used needles in in the top. And Davina pointed out that the plug socket being less than a metre away from the taps (it's directly above the draining board) is probably illegal.

And now, on a less ranty note, I've been playing with window managers today. First I tried out 9wm (a clone of 8½, Plan 9's window manager). Not bad. And then I tried lwm (based on 9wm). And I'm stil using lwm. It's not bad but I may switch back to fluxbox after I reboot (I can't be bothered killing lwm and then starting a new fluxbox session).

Tonight I'm going to LGBT, then to my ex-local (The Blue Boar). Next week I may go to some art thing before the Blue Boar. And next month I may go to Allsorts (what happens after LGBT) and forfeit the Blue Boar. It's so annoying - all these things happening on a Thursday.

I, John and Jen went to Rios last night. I was surprised at the amount of good music they played. We stayed in the goth room all night, of course. I believe the pain in my neck is a direct result of the amount of good quality music they played last night. Summer would have loved it, they played loads of Slipknot and Korn and System and Rammstein. No Final Countdown, unfortunately. They played some Cradle of Filth at my request. But at that point I was quite tired so I just sipped my orange juice and enjoyed it. Oh yeah, I got Cradle of Filth - From the Cradle to Enslave EP with my £10 Virgin voucher. Mmm, it's nice music.

Pointing device!
2004-10-03T23:33:00.000+01:00
I ordered a new pointing device today. I'd call it an optical trackball with scroll buttons but they call it a Logitech Marble Mouse. And I just realised it doesn't have a third button. Ah well, I only really use the third button for opening hyperlinks in new tabs in Firefox. There'll be an extension to let me do it another way. Or I could Ctrl-Click.

That brings the number of open orders to 5: Mozilla and Firefox T-shirts, Wikipedia T-shirt, HCI book, trackball, new PIN.

Want to take bets on what arrives first?

7am
2004-10-02T11:04:00.000+01:00
My last blog post was... Thursday AM. Oh course.

So, we had another Formal Foundations lecture and then Software Development (Tools and Design) in which we actually started Java. System.out.println? Stupid!

Then later on I went to the LGBT meeting with Jen, who is a friend of Will. Then we went to the bar in the Courtyard at the Student Union. I was going to my ex-local (the Blue Boar) so I had to go but Jen went to some place with LGBT people afterwards. Owen was at the Blue Boar. As it turns out, about half of the `young' (as to not be offensive, the operational definition of young shall be those who spend most of the night in the pool room ;) people at the pub shall be in Manchester on Wednesday. Interesting. Of course I'm going to see Slipknot with Summer. Cat looked very encoureging about the whole thing, you could tell by the look of absolute horror on her face.

Friday we had introductory lectures to Foundations of HCI and Key Skills for Computing Professionals. I thought HCI looked interesting and full of psychology, but possibly slightly unpractical (especially as the language we're doing in SD(TD) doesn't seem to make it easy to do anything let alone anything remotely GUIish). Key Skills for Computing Professionals seemed to be a potentially boring course.

After that I, Will, John, Jen and Fiona went to PC World and Currys as John was looking for a laptop (he left his PC at home, poor kid).

Then I went home, got some stuff ready and went to Davina's. I picked the kids up, took them to their house and their mum came home five minutes later. So yeah, very long and strenuous job. Then I came home, watched crappy TV and went to my second babysitting job of the evening. I watched various things I've never seen before. Manson's new video, the video of Y Control, a Cradle of Filth video and Happy Tree Friends. Happy Tree Friends was good for about the first three episodes. But it was on for a half-hour block (with crappy and less crappy music videos between each episode) so I was bored of it by the end.

After that I went back to Davina's and went to bed (she was in Bathley and it was 1am). I woke up freezing to death at about 7am. So I got ready, had breakfast, watched a remade episode of Astro Boy, took the bread and flapjack Davina let me have and froze myself all the way to the bus stop. Then froze all the way home (we we we we, etc.).

I just read a very interesting review of a kitten.

Encryption for Gaim.

A nice anti-redundant Java applets article: Web Architect-Jumping Through Java.

Hmm, it's 11am and I need to shower and eat. Tata.

P.S. This is how they teach Emacs: ``Now you should create a new file by clicking on the Files menu and selecting the Open File... item.''

If you can, see the page here (it may be only available for those who connect via the campus network).

I learnt without the aid of a mouse. I pity the poor users who will learn things from the SDTD course. Or any courses. One of the recommended books for the course is `Red Hat Linux'. Crazy! They ought to read The Art of Unix Programming. Great book with much practical advice and is just excellent in general.

I am The Fingerless Pianist!
2004-09-30T01:23:00.000+01:00
Hehe, I love this place. I made some more friends today. One's Welsh and cute and claims to wear PVC and proclaimed an interest in going to Rios (I believe he went tonight). I didn't go tonight as I was role-playing. No, not of the Final Fantasy, etc variety. Of the sitting round a table with die and a piece of paper.

The game was called Underpants on the Outside and was about comic-book superheros. I was The Fingerless Pianist! My powers involved being able to eat bombs... and not die, see through paper and soemthing else. My skills were snake-foo, which generally involved using snakes to whatever end and hacking.

It was so fun. I have to go again.

And after our lab time (which consisted of reading a piece of paper that told us how to log-in and send email - I was locating a dot file that made Red Hat/whatever display manager it was running bugger itself, exec bash in .cshrc was causing it for no apparent reason) we (me, Will, Niall, Wendy, Stuart and John) went to some focus group thing where she asked us about how top-up fees would affect students. We all got £10 Virgin vouchers.

Turns out Jacksons are doing a promotion... where there are free items to be had. Actual free items. I now have a bottle of Lucazade, American Chip Spice, and a pack of Rizlas. They also have free batteries (if they have any) and free non-vegan and/or non-ethical products.

Now, tomorrow. I have to vaguely understand the pieces of paper I have regarding discrete mathematics and answer some questions before 10am tomorrow morning. After an hour of that it's `software development' lab time. So that may consist of something harder. Like logging out.

I just realised something about today. I never went to my driving lesson. So that's some of Davina's money I have managed to waste. Fuckity fuck. Damnit. If I'm in all the time then I'll see it on my calendar (KOrangizer) or remember `oh, I have driving today, I wonder what time'. Fuck. I'm so good at forgetting things. `Yeah, I'll go to Rios on Friday', then I text back and say `Oh, sorry, I just remember I'm babysitting'. Davina will not be happy. She'll probably want paying back as it cost her money. However... and this is a big however. Why didn't he call me? He has my number (how did I mis-type that as money?). Surely he'd think `oh, he's forgotton, I'll give him a ring'. However, technically it is my fault. I really don't want to drive anyway. For a start it's un-ecologically sound.

I've spent like 20 hours now. Theoretically I'd only need about another 20 more before I could pass my test. Theoretically. But I really don't care for driving. I'd sooner wash-up than drive (I have some washing-up to be done left from the night before last...).

Oh yeah, I was going to cook for Davina before we went to the pub. But Will's friend Jenny from his sort of area in his halls is going to some LGBT thing (I haven't worked out what it is yet). And now I'm going with her to . I'll go to the pub, but after whatever. Since I'm meeting her at 6:45 outside the library, that would leave Davina about half an hour for making and eating tea (i.e. I'm cooking for her). So I'll have to reschedule that.

The more I talk to people the more I tend to get busier. And I can't remember what I'm doing and when. Well, I do. I just don't register any connection between `yes, I'll babysit your kid(s) at 7 on friday' and `yeah, I'll come to Rios on friday'.

At least the lab part of the course is easy-peasy. One of the recommended books was `Red Hat Linux' or something. Hahahaha! Red Hat sucks dick... it sucks Debian's dick because RH wants to be good by association.

I shall probably take something to do when I `baby'-sit in Thornton (they're all over 6). I finish at 4 so I should have time to get some quick tea before I go. For the first two weeks we don't have a lecture on Friday afternoon. So after that I'll have to take a bag with stuff to do while babysitting and some sandwiches. It takes about 30 minutes to get to Thornton at a peak time. And that is how long I have to get from my lecture to Davina's house.

On Wednesday I shall be going to Manchester with Summer to see Slipknot. I'll find out what time she finishes on wednesday as I wouldn't mind meeting Owen (I'll have to find out what time he finishes too). Yes, I checked my time-table. I finish at 2 (if we spend 2 hours in `software development' - doubtful, but possible).

And then I believe I shall be going to Rios next friday. With Summer. And I believe other people I know are going too. I think I recognised a few people at BURPS from Rios.

I tried out Mambo OS today it's at /~holizz/Mambo/ if you have access to my IP address at some point. It was cool. I learnt how to add a user to MySQL and stuff. It's kind of weird. I'll play around with it at some point. See what it can do.

Happy Hacking Keyboard
2004-09-28T23:51:00.000+01:00
Here's an interesting article from BME about somebody who got an anti-Bush picture tattooed on the back of her head and got paid a small amount of money for it.

The top 10 `technologists' have been announced... according to some website I've never heard of.

I think I know what piercing I may want next. It's so sexy. But if I got it it may not be too cosy in my mouth at night with a big barbell and my retainers. We'll see. It could also interfere with plans to get a tongue splitting (in the sense that I would lose my big barbell if I got my tongue split).

Ah yes, I should also mention that I've been disappointed with Firefox's `find' feature. It was kind of crappy. Now, in version 1.0PR, they have a slightly Emacs-like search facility. A bar appears at the bottom with your search term and some buttons. Like Emacs, it searches as you type. I'm happy with it. However, a future improvement could add an ability to move the focus to and from chrome in an easier way. At the moment, you'd have to tab through an entire document to get back to the location bar.

I made some friends today. Niall and Will. Well, I met Niall last Tuesday on enrollment day. But I didn't know his name until now. I went into the Biko bar (up until now I thought it was Bilko as in Sgt. Bilko, well whatever). They're on my course, well, Niall is on Multimedia Computing. But we're all A-K in terms of surnames so we'll be sharing labtime in Software Development. Four hours tomorrow. Computer & Architectures & Systems Software for 1 hour (times two) and two hours of Software Development - all lab time. We had an hour lecture today on Formal Foundations, which was on descrete mathematics today.

Will told me about the Happy Hacking Keyboard (Lite 2). It looks like a great keyboard. Only £30ish.  Aha! I found a UK reseller of the keyboard. Hoorah! Buy nay, it's £61. So no Happy Hacking keyboard for me.

Oh yeah, there's a new European geek shop now. Nerdorama. It's Slashdotted at the time of writing but I'll check it out ASAP.

So, as I was saying, the Solaris server at the University of Bradford (lithium) is really crappy. It seems to have less than half of the utilities a modern GNU/Linux distro comes with. And tools it has, none of them are GNU tools. So they're all crappy and hard to use. It doesn't have emacs, python.

Bash.org
2004-09-28T08:52:00.000+01:00
I found an interesting page about `optimising' websites for particular browsers.

Last night I watched Silent Waters (English title), which is one of the Bite the Mango film festival films. It was very good.

Tonight, it's bash.org.

Hahahaha. Bad sectors. I want BME/Hard membership.

This is one of my favourites from bash.org.

Rodeo.

Python.

8ball.

brb.

Now it's tomorrow (I seem to have a problem being able to post to my blog on the day I write a post):

There's now Wind Waker tattoos: So pretty. I hope they post it when it's coloured-in.

And don't forget the JPEG virus.

It's my first lecture at 10. An hour left to eat breakfast and get there.

Fucking hell, this dial-up service is shit. It usually takes me several attempts to connect and it seems to be cutting me off every 15 minutes this morning. I usually get an hour or so. On monday I can put my name down at Dennis Bellamy Halls to change halls... to one with broadband. Then I'll only have to worry about this port-blocking, which I haven't investigated yet.