Posts for November 2003 (26 entries)

Shhh, it’s a secret

28th November 2003, late at night | Comments (16)

So, I had an idea. I don’t know if anyone else has had the same idea, but then (as you’ll see) I wouldn’t. That’s the point…

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Googley woogley

27th November 2003, the wee hours | Comments (16)

My parents are good people. They’ve always looked after my brother and I, made sure we had the best of everything (or the worst, depending on which character trait they were building in us that week), and they’ve always backed us in all that we did.

I used to think of them as well-rounded people, more interested in our happiness than how we’re fairing in the rat race. But recently I’ve noticed a mercenary glint in my mother’s eye…

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Increase my what?

26th November 2003, late at night | Comments (6)

I get about thirty emails a day from a nice lady called Rebecca Overton who repeatedly tells me to ,,Increase my D,I_C.K_ *SIZE.

Why she insists I follow this course of action, I cannot say, but she must be admired for her persistence if nothing else…

View this post in full (176 words, 1 image).


Javascript image captions

25th November 2003, late at night | Comments (6)

I’ve been going a bit Javascript-mad recently. Usually I steer well clear of the stuff, but since the blockquote incident I’ve rather had it on the brain.

Along the same lines as the blockquote script, I came up with the idea for presenting title data as captions for images…

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Talking of Daisy

25th November 2003, early evening | Comments (1)

I was just having a nose through the Web, as is my wont, when I stumbled across a comment I’d left at a friend’s site

View this post in full (85 words, 1 image).


XML feed moving to new location

25th November 2003, mid-afternoon | Comments (8)

Just to let you know that I’m going to be swapping my XML feed to a new location. Sorry to be a pain, but this change will let me offer further syndication options at a later date if needed.

So, where’s it moving to? Well there’ll be four RSS formats on offer at the following locations (in fact, they’re there now, so why not swap over today):

A page explaining the feeds, and detailing any future syndication options, will appear at ~/blog/syndicate/, but I can’t put that up until I kill off the old XML feed, as the addresses are the same.

I’ll be making the change at the end of the week (on 2003-11-30).

Stupidity on my part, so once again, my humblest apologies *bow*.


Come on England

22nd November 2003, early morning | Comments (4)

Mike Tindall helping England win the Rugby World Cup

Nice Titles revised

21st November 2003, late afternoon | Comments (31)

You may have noticed I’m using Stuart Langridge’s Nice Title script on this site. With the help of Ethan I’ve made a couple of modifications to the original version, so I thought I’d highlight them here and let you grab a copy if you wanted…

View this post in full (444 words, 1 image).


Dilbert

21st November 2003, late afternoon | Comments (0)

From ‘Dilbert and the way of the Weasel’, by Scott Adams:

I subscribe to a fitness-orientated magazine that is packed full of articles on the right way to eat and exercise. That’s all they write about — eating and exercising. You might think that after the first few issues they would have said everything that needs to be said on those two topics. But you’d be wrong. Amazingly, the magazine discovers new and better ways to eat and exercise every single month!

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Slightly scary

19th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (7)

A man with some dolls' heads, a bunch of dolls' eyes and a funny tool

Worth the wait?

19th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

George Bush may be visiting Great Britain at the moment, but his was not the most eagerly awaited arrival in this land. In the western boroughs of Edinburgh a year-defining moment has finally arrived, and with it comes blessed relief for thousands of poor souls throughout the country…

View this post in full (344 words, 1 image).


Brickwork

18th November 2003, early afternoon | Comments (3)

Screen shot of Michael Simmons's site

http://www.michael-simmons.net/

There's not really anything on this page, but purely as a piece of design, I like it an awful lot.


Email revisited: Tucson, Arizona (22nd April, 2002)

18th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (5)

Dunstan sitting on the edge of his bed, back towards the camera

I hate being alone and having to go to bed. I don’t want to pack up, lie down and shut out the light in my head. A day done. Opportunities passed. Doors shut that can’t be reopened.

I hate it.

In the bathroom, as I get washed, I’m listening out for a phone call or a door bell. I look in the mirror and clean my teeth, I lean in and stare at my eyes, look at how my forehead wrinkles when I raise my eyebrows, turn side to side and see that I look much better head on, when you can’t see the shape of my nose or my chin or my lips.

And as I look and turn and look again, I always have half an eye on what’s behind me in my reflection. Half my mind hoping the door will open and something will walk through that’ll push the end of the day back, that’ll shove me back into a brighter world than the one I’m about to leave for the night.

But no-one ever comes through the door, and the phone never rings. And each night I grit my teeth as I climb into bed, because it’s another day gone by and I’m still not hers and she’s still not mine and it makes me miserable.


What’s playing

18th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

Some songs I’m enjoying at the moment…

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Neutralising spam

16th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (15)

Last night I read Mark Pilgrim’s thoughts on the futility of trying to combat comment spam on blogs. I know practically nothing about past fights against spammers, so it was good to get an insight into just how much oomph these shifty-eyed swine have behind them…

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Easy CSS drop shadows

14th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (65)

A few people have noticed that the drop shadows I use on images here aren’t part of the pictures themselves, but are added on through the web equivalent of Magic Fairy Dust — CSS. I thought I’d explain how it’s done in case anyone else wanted to know…

View this post in full (662 words, 1 image).


A visual guide to navigating blog comments

12th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (40)

I’ve made another improvement to the comments system, and this time I think it’s pretty innovative (well, I think the last one was as well, but I do like this one)…

View this post in full (794 words, 4 images).


Opera and its Small-Screen Rendering technology

11th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (5)

A nice man at Opera just told me about very neat feature in the latest versions of their browser…

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Site updates

10th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (27)

I’ve recently added some new features to this site, and thought I may as well tell you about them, plus a few other things you might not notice at first glance…

View this post in full (1146 words, 7 images).


Leigh village press up record smashed

8th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

I just did seventy-two press ups in one go! That's eight more than I’ve ever done before, and twenty-two more than my usual limit.

Well done me :o)


Musica

7th November 2003, early afternoon | Comments (4)

Screen shot of Joss Stone's web site

Two bands for you to go check out:

  1. Joss Stone: ‘The future of blue-eyed soul lives in a 16-year old girl from Devon, England.’ (Home page | Album | More info)
  2. Tenacious D: Jack Black and Kyle Gass are ‘The Greatest Rock Band the World has ever seen.’ (Home page | Album | More info)

Return of the pen

7th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

I’ve improved the panorama graphics for this site. I added in shadows on all the trees and it’s made everything look a lot more 3D. I also improved the ‘night’ effect while I was at it, so overall the images are looking a bit more realistic…

View this post in full (86 words, 1 image).


That dog is up to something

7th November 2003, lunch time | Comments (0)

I’m a little worried — yesterday I went out into the hall and Poppy was slinking off in classic “I just did something very, very bad, but maybe if I crawl along the floor with my eyes down he won’t notice” pose. Then she hid behind the table and wouldn’t look at me for an hour…

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Visual oddness

3rd November 2003, lunch time | Comments (1)

This is just plain odd

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Resurfacing the yard

3rd November 2003, lunch time | Comments (5)

A collage of photos taken from our rooftop showing the yard being resurfaced

We’ve been having our yard resurfaced today and we're all finding it rather exciting.

It might not seem like much to get excited about, but in the 17 years we’ve lived here the yard has always been a working area, with sheep, chickens, dogs and muddy boots being traipsed through it every day. Now it’s being transformed into a country-manor yard, with gravel, decking, built-in flower beds and the like.

Anyway, mid-way through the day I climbed up on to our roof and took about thirty photos of the work in progress, then mashed them together into a montage.


Allergy testing

1st November 2003, lunch time | Comments (9)

By this wednesday, after exhausting every other option under the sun, I was down to three strategies for dealing with these darn mouth ulcers…

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