Comments by: Dunstan

The person you searched for (Dunstan) has authored 624 comments. They are shown below in reverse date-order, and grouped by the post they belong to:

Post Comment
Post Comment
May 2006
Allergy testing

"I have no idea why she was milking cows. She's a botanist."

For some reason I am a big fan of this sentence :o)

[view in situ]
April 2006
A hello-and-goodbye kind of post

I added it maybe... 6 months ago. But I didn't mention it -- I thought it'd be fun for people to discover :o)

[view in situ]
Grrr, hear me roar

I went to Crewe & Alsager College, which was a sort of satellite college of Manchester Metropolitan University.

[view in situ]
January 2006
A hello-and-goodbye kind of post

I'm pleased to say that had _nothing_ _nothing_ _nothing_ to do with that product... nothing at all.

[view in situ]
March 2005
Another short film of the puppies in the garden

Because for some reason my system requires people to insert an 'http://' before the url.
I must have had a reason for that, but I can't recall what it was.

In the past I've updated your other…

[view in situ]

No they don't. The content of my blog has nothing, not one tiny little thing, to do with what you want, or what the Anonymous Coward wants, or what every reader of my site wants -- it's up to…

[view in situ]

Fellas, the Internet is plenty big, if you don't like the fact that the contents of my blog reflects what's happening in my life, then bugger off elsewhere.

This site isn't just for techies,…

[view in situ]

"And why hasn't your iSight thwacked a rock or something yet?"

Because I am like a panther when I move.

And, we don't have rocks in our garden :o)

[view in situ]
I am a kitten

Stephen, that's very kind of you to say so, but I worked for myself for 3 years and I've had enough of it. I'd love to be involved in a startup company like Flickr, but as regards being a freelance…

[view in situ]
February 2005
A short film of the puppies in the garden

Kev, I realised last night that I boobed in making this film -- when I imported the uncompressed QT files into iMovie HD I didn't select iSight, but something different.

I've been wondering why…

[view in situ]

I used iVeZeen:
http://www.ivezeen.com/

It's an excellent little program, and so simple even my parents can use it without trouble.

[view in situ]

It's the Zero 7 mix, off an album called Acoustic 3.

UK;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obido…

US:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/…

HTH

[view in situ]

We're going to keep either Squeak or Dotty, we've managed to sell Lotty, and we have a buyer for either Patch or Scrap (they've still to decide).

We did think about keeping all of them and just…

[view in situ]

Scott, it's called a sub-domain and you use your server admin panel to set them up. If you don't know how to do that then ask your hosting company, they'll tell you (they might also say you can't…

[view in situ]
World's first? Wimax for train commuters

Oh, bad luck. But I expect you're right, it's probably just at business hours.

Thanks for reporting back, Rob!

[view in situ]

Ah, you might be right, Jacques, it's the form in PHPMyAdmin. Good thinking...

[view in situ]

Ah, thanks for the heads-up, Phil.

For some reason the keyboard on my Mac is outputting a pound symbol that's not standard in some way. I've inserted the proper decimal code instead, so…

[view in situ]

"...I only had my iBook out long enough to fill up Andy's iPod Shuffle with some *proper* music"

bah!

[view in situ]

I've recently been able to dial-up via the modem on my bluetooth mobile phone, but it's nothing like having broadband. (Plus it cuts out when we go through tunnels.)

I imagine that the…

[view in situ]
January 2005
A short film of Squeak and Lotty

It's a song I recored off a film: Cry-Baby, starring Johnny Depp.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0099329/

I thought it was a lot of fun so I hooked my MiniDisc player up to the video and recorded…

[view in situ]

That should have fixed the autoplay thing, Chris.

[view in situ]

BTW, today I paid $15 for iVeZeen [1] a wonderful Mac app that lets you record from your iSight.

I found it much friendlier than the previous program I'd been using (Quicktime Broadcaster) and…

[view in situ]
A short film of the puppies at 13-days old

You're probably right Jeff. If someone from Blink 182 or the Beastie Boys complains I'll give them a puppy to placate them.

Thank god I haven't used an Ozzy Osbourne song...

[view in situ]
A short film of the puppies with their eyes open

The title of the song attracted me, what with the puppies being "small things", and also (though the film might not show it) the slightly frantic nature of the song matched the puppies behavior…

[view in situ]
A short film of the week-old puppies

I think I had to use it because without it the bit of the background image that is "hidden" outside the li becomes visible. I know it shouldn't be visible, but it was. Using oveflow:hidden was the…

[view in situ]

It's a bug in Firefox, Andrew. The damn thing balks when I set a certain style on my comments and sets my numbers to zero. I never got around to working around it.

[view in situ]

Hmm... I think I missed an apostrophe off "Puppies' Names" in the credits section... damn.

[view in situ]
Lotty and Dotty

She's good thanks, Brian. She's pretty much back to her normal self now, except she has big dangly dog-boobs, which aren't at all attractive. Obviously.

[view in situ]

Michael, I'll be posting some small videos over the weekend so you can meet all the puppies. I'll tell you the other two names then :o)

[view in situ]

Strangely similar, David. My photo might be popular in dorms at the West Midlands School for Guide Dogs...

[view in situ]
Scrap lying on his back

I am getting my work done, but only just. Not only do I have stuff to do for my day job, but I'm also doing some writing at the moment, and it's that which has produced such a protracted silence on…

[view in situ]

This is my favourite photo of the puppies so far :o)

[view in situ]
Poppy has puppies

Paul, the spell checker is the one built into Apache. It's based on this system:

http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2…

[view in situ]

Poppy gave birth at home, in the cage you can see in the photos. Mum helped pull the puppies out out when needed (a couple were the wrong way round), and cleared the much away from their faces, but…

[view in situ]

"I have just three questions: are puppies easy to care for, how is Apple, and what's Mr Steve J like?'

(1) At this stage, very easy - you just keep them warm and let the mum look after them.…

[view in situ]

I guess we'll be giving them away when they're old enough. Mum and Dad don't want any more dogs, they just wanted Poppy to experience having pups of her own, and she was getting on a bit (in fact,…

[view in situ]

I guess she started giving birth at about 0940, and finished at about 1730, so it took her just under eight hours to have all five.

There was a long, long gap between number four and number five…

[view in situ]

We think: Squeak (girl), Dotty (girl), Lotty (girl), Patch (boy), and Scrap (boy).

All named after their behavior and appearance in the first 24 hours...

[view in situ]

Yes, I'm afraid that writing, the new job, getting sick, Christmas, moving, not having web access, moving again, The Girlfriend visiting, getting sick again, and a host of other things has rather…

[view in situ]
Scrap lying on his tummy

Martin: because Firefox has a bug in it, and I never find time to try to work around it.

[view in situ]

Re. iPod - I actually don't have one. I was going to buy one last December but in the end decided I needn't bother since I worked from home and was always close to my music. I'm going to wait until…

[view in situ]

It's like holding a fat mouse...

(Cue penis jokes.)

[view in situ]
December 2004
Poppies everywhere

Aaron, you're right, it is a simple picture, in fact it's much simpler to make than even your explanation. The neat part is the photo itself, not how it was achieved.

[view in situ]
November 2004
A new job

Andrew, I put the livesearch feature up a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't entirely finished (I can't recall if it works in IE), but I got so tired of sitting on it I figured I'd just put it live and…

[view in situ]

"...what exactly are you going to be doing?"

Sorry fellas, I'm not allowed to say :o/

[view in situ]

The Girlfriend, I'm afraid, is staying in San Francisco. We'll be together for Christmas (she flies in on the 20th) and we'll see each other in March when I go to SXSW, but other than that it's…

[view in situ]

Unfortunately not, Simon. I'm going to be working in the UK office for 6 months, and then (and only then) will I qualify for an L1B visa, which will let me transfer to the US office.

The H1B…

[view in situ]
Audio tape to MP3

Straight comedy:

Tony Hancock.
Steve Coogan.
Dad's Army.
Billy Connolly.
I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
Yes Minister/Prime Minister.
Alan Partridge.
Bob Newheart.
Rowan Atkinson.
12th…

[view in situ]

Gabriel, I've a fairly large collection of audio books (about 120 of them) as well as lots of comedy tapes. In all I guess I have about 150 'items' I need to copy... God knows how many hours worth…

[view in situ]
Solving CSS problems for Mozilla Europe

It's just you. The access navigation is useful for everyone.

[view in situ]

Will, thanks for your suggestion but the point is that I needed to use 'top' not bottom' because I had to position the <ul> relative to the _top_ of its parent div. If I'd used 'bottom'…

[view in situ]

It's perfect in Opera 7.52 on the Mac, and as Paul and Chris said, it works on the later versions of Opera on Windows and Linux.

I can't go testing every version of every browser on every…

[view in situ]

In IE/Mac if you resize the page once it's loaded, then the menu kicks perfectly into place, Philippe.

I have no idea why IE/Mac does that, but since it wasn't a target browser, I didn't bother…

[view in situ]

I don't know, Turnip, as I say, it's hard to make judgments on other people's decisions unless you know what's happened to lead them to this point.

But let's stop that branch of the discussion…

[view in situ]

I looked for an archived copy of the 'red version' of http://mozilla-europe.org, but I couldn't find one. I imagine the guys at Moz-EU have a copy, but short of getting that and hosting it myself I…

[view in situ]

I'm not writing it up again: if you're really interested, you'll figure it out!

As for IE, it gets no fancy box styling so the heading and paragraphs will look the same as all the others.…

[view in situ]
Applying CSS to external services

Tom, as Mike says all it would need would be a very specific rule placed in a style sheet which was declared after the users style sheet, and Mr Poll would have control over things such as…

[view in situ]
Berkeley versus Arizona

Oh, and I'm terribly sorry about your ankle :o(

[view in situ]

I HATE that episode of Friends!!

[view in situ]

When I was a kid (and playing union) I played in every single position except tighthead prop (on the right of the scrum). At university (where I played league) I was a utility back, so I fitted in…

[view in situ]

John, I don't doubt that they're jolly strong, or that most of them are amazingly fit, I was just pointing out that had I spent my money on running those teams, I'd be rather disappointed with…

[view in situ]

Wonderful spot, Lord Conway!

If I'd realised at the time I could have heaved a chair at him or something...

[view in situ]

It's a disturbing trend, I agree Mike, and I'm afraid that the next few photo posts are just as bad, as the only pics I could get from the game were from the sidelines behind the players. It's…

[view in situ]
Touchdown, Tim Mixon

Um... the stabilizer only kicks in if you've been focusing on the same object for about 2 seconds, so I doubt this photo would have made it start up. As for panning, I don't really know, you'd have…

[view in situ]

I think their stadium was astro, actually... yes, just checked, it's astro.

[view in situ]
Small dog on Stinson Beach

Yup, I have one screwed onto the lens all the time.

[view in situ]
October 2004
Hitler who?

It is. I was joking :o)

[view in situ]
Die photos, die!

"... and of course cat-based pornography."

Seth, that's going down as one of the more disturbing comments on this blog.

[view in situ]
Skim-surfer on Stinson Beach

The photo wasn't tweaked, I just used a fairly long exposure (something like 0.8 seconds) to get the motion effect.

[view in situ]
Small dog on Stinson Beach

Um... maybe. But little dogs run very quickly, and I only had this one chance for a shot.

I still think it works, but then maybe that's because I was there, and can project what I saw into the…

[view in situ]

I happen to like it for it's lack of doggy-detail :o)

[view in situ]
Big dog on Stinson Beach

Lots of info out there on it, Gregg:

What is it:
http://www.cdfinder.de/iptc.html
http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Gl…

Is it useful for…

[view in situ]

It was big, and it was furry, and yes, both the GF and I gave it a hug. It was impossible not to :o)

[view in situ]

I do plan to add in EXIF data at some point, but I need to do a bit more research on it before I start putting in the effort of tagging everything.

And it's not 'turning into a photoblog', I'm…

[view in situ]
Sweeping the infield

Ah, slight problem with me forgetting to fill in the UTC timestamp of the post.

All fixed now :o)

[view in situ]
Lemur therapy

*keeps quiet for now*

[view in situ]

Damn, those midgets are good at photography!

Thanks for pointing us at those pictures, Bryan, I'm going to have a good nose through them :o)

[view in situ]
Sigh

Don't know, it looks like a big chopstick :o/

[view in situ]
Diet Pepsi, the choice of Athlets

England _is_ a country, it's just that we're politically grouped (as that definition says) with Scotland, Ireland, and wales, into Great Britain and the UK.

But we're still a country.

[view in situ]
Oi chihuahua

The original image was pretty poor, I had one chance for a quick shot, in not-so-good lighting conditions, and with a bit of a crappy background.

You can see the original…

[view in situ]

Desaturating it wouldn't have done any good at all since the colours in the initial image weren't very interesting, and as a simple black and white image it didn't do much better.

This version…

[view in situ]
Baseball batter at Oakland Coliseum

We were actually about 10 rows from the very, very top, but I sneaked down to the very front and snapped a few pics.

I also nearly caught a ball while I was there; I was busy looking through the…

[view in situ]

It is in danger of becoming a photoblog, isn't it?
I've three more photos from that game, and a couple from a street fair to come, but I promise I also have some more nonsense writing, and some…

[view in situ]
September 2004
Shoes on a wire

The GF suggested the same thing.

You and she must hang with the same bad crowd, Eric ;o)

[view in situ]

There are tons of the damn things here in San Francisco: from where I stood to take that photo I could see three other pairs, including one pair of infant's shoes.

As for retouching: no I didn't…

[view in situ]
Sin

I can't remember; probably something like "HARBIN'S".

[view in situ]

Nope, never used GIMP, although I have looked at it.
I'm a Photoshop boy, through and through.

[view in situ]

I just saw the sign, and it looked kinda cool, and I think my brain must have recognised the potential, so I snapped away :o)

[view in situ]
Shooting things

Because the damn spell checker that's built into apache is American. I'm working on adding in a UK version though...

[view in situ]

I don't shoot 'a lot', Scott (hey, that rhymes) — if you look again you'll see I say I've never shot anything more powerful than an air-gun before. (And the only time I fired an air-gun was when…

[view in situ]

Ah, excellent, thanks Jonas, I feel much better about that.
What a responsible chap you are ;o)

[view in situ]
SBC Park

It's supposed to look that way.

It was going to be seamless and smooth, but I didn't have enough images to do that, and then I coudln't get a panorama program to work on the Mac, so I gave up…

[view in situ]
Baseball pitcher at SBC Park

SBC Park was just what I expect from American sports, huge, lots of walking to get to your seat, and lots of off-limit places that I really wanted to go.

I had a good time there though, and will…

[view in situ]

It took a couple of hours in total, although if I was doing it again, it'd be a lot quicker.
One neat thing is that the shadows work — they're see-through, so you can see the guy's foot through…

[view in situ]
Redesign explained: tag transformations

Justin, I already do that: <dro:person value=""></dro:person>

[view in situ]
Rubber ducks

The damn apache spell checker module uses an American-only dictionary!
I'm working on implementing a full US-UK version though, so just hold your horses.

That's also one reason why it says: "X…

[view in situ]
August 2004
Seagulls

Steven, all I did was load the RAW file into Photoshop, bump up the exposure 1 notch, and then tweak the levels slightly to bring them into the correct alignment. Nothing beyond that :o)

[view in situ]
Rubber ducks

A wee bit, Rob. I'm shooting digital and storing them as RAW files, so when I open them in Photoshop I get to apply more or less exposure, sharpening, vignetting, etc, etc.

It gives a much…

[view in situ]
Redesign explained: time presentation

Chris, you can't directly use my code for WordPress, you'll have to go find one of the many WP plugins that people have written since I posted this entry and implement that.

For example, here's…

[view in situ]
Site updates

Ah, thanks Jeff, I'll fix that.

As for the spell checker, I'll write it up at a later date, but for now go see this post, it's where I started out:

http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2…

[view in situ]
Facts from Oliver Letwin

Richard, I know it's easy to make facts look dramatic when they don't mean much, and it's easy to compare unlike with unlike, to be dramatic, but the facts that Letwin presents are useful highlight…

[view in situ]
Redesign explained: tag transformations

Excellent, thanks Greg!

[view in situ]
Swallows and Frogs

Turnip, it is a frog, it's a Common Garden Frog, we have them all the time in our garden, and we even compared his markings to those in our Frog Book.

All the evidence says he's a frog :o)

[view in situ]

David:
http://www.style.org/unladenswallo…

Very good question though, I can't believe I didn't think to slip that in somewhere :o)

[view in situ]
The Shadow/Highlight tool in Photoshop CS

Right then, I got James's altered image, and I have to say he's done very well:

http://1976design.com/blog/images/…

It doesn't quite seem to have the contrast of the Photoshop version,…

[view in situ]

Well, I've sent James the original image (a fairly small 500x333px file) which I used for my example above, so we'll see how he gets on.

I guess the best thing to do would be to email whoever…

[view in situ]

Ben, that's why I said "not that it always results in a better image, of course", my example was there to highlight the sorts of dramatic changes you can make. It's up to you to decide to what…

[view in situ]

Mark, I think it's much more than just a repackaged Curves tool — I certainly was't able to replicate the results of Shadow/Highlight using only Curves, but then maybe that's just me.

[view in situ]
28 years ago today

Gosh, well thanks to everyone who posted such kind comments on the day, and also to all the people who emailed; it's certainly the most "Happy Birthday's" I've ever received (from so many parts of…

[view in situ]

That wasn't a "smug" Ahem, that was a "Idon'tknowifyou'reinterested" Ahem.

Thanks anyway :o)

[view in situ]

They are ugly aren't they?

Maybe it's so their mothers look beautiful in comparison, as a reward for doing all that hard work.

[view in situ]

Hey, I'd forgotten about those blue sunglasses; they were cool!

[view in situ]

Ah, Happy Birthday yourself, Craig :o)

I was born in Norfolk, so the clipping is probably from an east anglian paper. We didn't move to Dorset until a few years later.

[view in situ]
A walk in the sun

Steve, a 'drove' is a kind of country lane that farmers use to access their fields; the idea being that they 'drove' their cheep and cows down these lanes.

The term also applies to the…

[view in situ]

She's a Jack Russell, Nicolas.
Long legged, short haired, completely loopy.

[view in situ]
July 2004
Redesign explained: tag transformations

JP, the picture of food is linked from the text "Right, time for dinner…" at the end of the article.

And as for your method of displaying images, yes, that's a great way for something like a…

[view in situ]

Drew [1] also suggested using XSLT for the job. If I ever do choose to transform conversations then I'll certainly look into it; it seems like a good opportunity to give that technology a…

[view in situ]

David, the main reason our code differs so much in length is the fact that I _do_ check for the comment lines — that makes up the bulk of my code I suspect.

But yes, it's interesting to…

[view in situ]
Summer garden

I just measured the bucket it was in (using the lines you can see in the photos) and came up with:

Body: 5cm/2 inches long
Wing span: 10cm/4 inches wide

Pretty big!

[view in situ]

Ah, yes: I've known for quite some time that my friend's were getting married at the end of July. I also knew that three-months was the longest US visa I could get. I therefore planned my trip so…

[view in situ]
Redesign explained: time presentation

Aryan, that would then cause a problem if you decided you wanted to click on the checkbox, or click-drag select some text. The comment would be unselected.

The CSS and Javascript for the…

[view in situ]

Simon, it's not deliberate, it's a bug in the browsers. They (sometimes) reset the ordered-list numbering when they get to one of my (class="dunstan") comments. I have no idea why, but I'm going to…

[view in situ]

Thanks for that David, as I said to Andrew, it's always nice to see an alternative approach.

[view in situ]

Andrew, thanks for your alternative code, but remember that the 24hr clock never actually reaches 24:00! It's 23:59, and then 00:00 :o)

But always nice to see a different appraoch, so thanks for…

[view in situ]

Thanks for that post Steve, it's nice to see some figures.

I coded as I did because, as you say, a) it's nice and simple to understand, and so easier to maintain, and b) because of the…

[view in situ]

Rimantas, what a great idea! It might be overkill, but it's a cool concept, and one I'll bear in mind :o)

[view in situ]

Colin, I'm afraid it doesn't work on Safari (which is a bugger, as that's what I use as well). Mark Wubben says it's due to Safari's event handling, and I think he's right, as I've run into quite a…

[view in situ]

Shawn, I get that same error on certian posts, and that includes the one you highlight. I have no idea why it happens, but I'm going to be revisiting all the comment highlighting code soon so maybe…

[view in situ]

Matthom, glad you like it, and yes, feel free to use the code :o)

[view in situ]

Thanks Ken, it looks a bit funny in FF because the font is too big, but in Safari it's just right. I think I might write that up next, along with the image insertion script.

[view in situ]
Version 2

I think so Martin, because everything's fine on my screen right now. 92 all round.
I will certainly look into clearing this weirdness up.

As an aside: 92 comments! Crikey!

[view in situ]

Faruk, I'm sorry! I hate it when people get my name wrong (they even do it in my own blog comments), so I'm sorry to have done it to you.

I've only had 4 hours sleep in the last 48 hours (I've…

[view in situ]

Robert said: "Underneath "posted 2 days blah blah" it says "Alert Robert Lofthouse to your comment" - I don't want to alert myself, so that should be removed on the previewing section"

If I…

[view in situ]

Hmm, I can't replicate that problem, Jeff. What browser are you using?

[view in situ]

Mark, Jorge, I'm writing-up the rational behind splitting my CSS as the first of my explanation posts, so keep your eyes peeled.

[view in situ]

Waylman, that's exactly what's happening on Tobi's machine, and your solution is perfect; thanks very much for posting it here!

[view in situ]

Thanks for pointing out those two little problems, Frank; I'm in the process of fixing both of them :o)

[view in situ]

Tim, I'm afraid not. I have limited time I can spend on the blog, and so while people are welcome to take the Javascript I write and adapt it for their own needs (while sticking within the CC…

[view in situ]

David, in future try writing http://xmouse.ithium.net, I think the script is deciding that your url is not a url because it doesn't start with http or www. I'll look into it though.

As for the…

[view in situ]

Paul, you were right, I forgot to swap over some urls in the blogroll code when I copied the files from the dev site to the live site. So, the blogroll wasn't getting updated here, but the dev site…

[view in situ]

Ken, it's a bit of a bugger trying to get the speed right: I tweaked it so they worked just right for me on Safari, but then yes, they're a little slow on Firefox, although (and this is the…

[view in situ]

JMC, thanks for the first comment!
The XML feeds are broken right now as the code that generates them has gone for a burton, and my access to the server has died as well.

I'm certainly not…

[view in situ]
A weekend away at Sea Ranch

Mo, look in the colophon, it explains everything there:
http://1976design.com/blog/colopho…

[view in situ]
Flexible floats 3

Simon you do it like this:

a:focus::after {
content: " [" attr(accesskey) "]";
}

HTH.

[view in situ]
Transfer tickets

Just... wait... a... couple... more... days!
I can't promise you a new pano, but I can promise a few other new things :o)

[view in situ]

Rob, I've written about the things I've written about because they're so different from my everyday life in Dorset: they're meant to amuse, not to convey complaint. If they don't amuse you, then…

[view in situ]
Laptops as social aids

Not a problem, I'm glad you came back and weren't upset too much.

Thanks for the kind note :o)

[view in situ]

He is! He only has a 12in Powerbook! ;o)

[view in situ]

Thanks for the tip, Aryan, but I bought one about two and a half months ago, so I've had good use out of it already:
http://1976design.com/blog/archive…

[view in situ]

Victoria, I know that a few people with disabilities read my site, but I don't know if anyone who is permanently house bound does, I guess the odds would suggest not, but I'd be interested to hear…

[view in situ]

Yes, Tom, you may buy an iBook, but that means you'll only able to help injured people, not full-on cripples.

Still, every little helps; so go out and Rendezvous among the poor...

[view in situ]
Barbequing with the rich and famous

Hey Sabrina! Nice to see you back :o)

Crumbs, I'm sorry, what can I say... I was waiting for you, but you seem to have gone and got engaged, and... wait a minute! You're engaged to John…

[view in situ]

Yes, 'girlfriend' :o)

I haven't written much about her, because she's not an on-line kind of gal, but I'm sure she'll make appearences here every now and then :o)

Her first mention was back…

[view in situ]

I like that advert, Martin :op

[view in situ]
June 2004
England 5 Portugal 6

David, we have a giant TV, but they don't show Euro 2004 on the regular US networks. I think you have to pay for it.

[view in situ]

*keeps a stiff upper-lip*

Well done, Marco... well done :o)

[view in situ]
Mission Delores Park

Ai ai ai ai!!

[view in situ]

I'm well aware that Mexican people speak Spanish, but I'm writing a silly story here, not an encyclopedia entry. On my web site, Mexicans speak Mexican :o)

[view in situ]
At Safeway deli counter, part two

Testing

[view in situ]

Ha ha, I like that picture, Karen :op

[view in situ]
Saucer of milk for table three

Ha ha, no they weren't talking about me :op

[view in situ]

Ah, good spot, Mark -- I hadn't noticed because Safari didn't show any problems with the page at all, I wonder why that was?

Fixed now :o)

[view in situ]
Busy having fun

Very good point, there's 80 to get me going again.

[view in situ]
May 2004
The PHP code behind my archive page

They don't work as intended in Safari either, Kris; I have to do something about that... but thanks for the heads up!

[view in situ]

Rahul, it could be an accessibility problem, but I do use quite verbose title text for each link, so I think that gets around the issue. And, yes, it was a conscious design decision; I think the…

[view in situ]

Hannes, that's excellent, thanks very much for posting your code, I think I'll implement that on my site.

Always happy to be shown the optimum way to code PHP or SQL: most of my code is highly…

[view in situ]

I should point out that there's a WordPress hack for this:
http://wiki.wordpress.org/index.ph…

So if you like my archive format and you run WordPress, check that out.

[view in situ]
Dance like nobody’s watching

Just as good!

[view in situ]
The curious case of the footloose footwear

Ah! Very good, David, I'd forgotten about that :op

[view in situ]

Here's the 'Leave a Book' thing, Alistair, it seems to be called 'BookCrossing':
http://www.bookcrossing.com/

Interesting idea :o)

[view in situ]
Glamour, 24/7

That's very odd, they must have altered their wishlist urls, because that wasn't my wishlist at all!

All fixed now :o)

[view in situ]

C.

[view in situ]
The making of a Hollywood car chase

Two interesting sites I found while writing this:

http://www.hottr6.com/triumph/BULL…
http://tcotrel.tripod.com/carchase…

[view in situ]
Senses

"...limited taste..." means if it doesn't have fat, salt, sugar, lemon, vinegar or spice on it, then it pretty much doesn't taste of anything. Oh, and sour things, I can taste 'sour'. Bleugh.

[view in situ]

Good god, you're right, Joe. My word sounds more like something to do with 'offal'. I wonder how that got through the spell checker? :o/

[view in situ]
A shared language

Ha ha, very good David :op

[view in situ]
Text-messaging

Stupid spell checker!
Fixed :o)

[view in situ]
Being single

Posting when you're drunk ... *shakes head* ...

[view in situ]
April 2004
Howdy, from the West Coast

ColetasSoft, unfortunately those are both windows programs, and I'm a mac boy now. But thanks for the thought.

Actually, I couldn't find any mac softare, so if anyone knows of any...

[view in situ]

Graham, I'm here under the visa-waiver programme, and am officially indulging in a three month photography trip. I don't think there's any chance of getting a visa to stay here and just work…

[view in situ]

Fool! :op

[view in situ]

If you touch those posters, Marcotte, I'll send the Queen's Own Beefeaters around to drag you off to the Tower!

[view in situ]

I know, Margaret, very sheltered :o)
But 14 and she's already bi-sexual? Wow...

[view in situ]

Colin, the header _might_ change, but I doubt it. It takes such a lot of effort to do that I don't think I have the time. Plus I like to see what's happening back home :o)

[view in situ]

Keith, the guide book says the Fiddlers Green is the "best place to meet an Irish person in San Francisco" :o)

[view in situ]

Thanks David, I haven't quite got used to the Mac yet and I keep finding things have cut and pasted in strange ways. All fixed now.

[view in situ]
Old before its time

It's going with me to use as a test machine, Andy. Sorry about that, but I have to be able to view things on the PC when I build them.

[view in situ]

Well well, I am much cheered - it seems I could return the laptop and get the new model, but I'm not going to. Ethan pointed out the hardware problems that often dog new hardware releases from…

[view in situ]

I got the educational discount, Tony :o)

And as for the import duty - yes, that's always a pain in the backside, but I've had that in mind the whole time, so it's a little easier to…

[view in situ]

Is everyone else out there made of paper and glass? My current Dell laptop weighs slightly more than the 17in PB, and I can carry that around and have it on my knee without any trouble at all.

I…

[view in situ]

Yeah, I know, I know... I was just a little miffed, that's all. Checking the web now it seems everyone in the world knew about these updates, except me! :op

Never mind, I shall ignore it and…

[view in situ]

Yes, luckily I not only paid US dollars, but also got a sneaky discount, so until this evening I was amazingly happy with the whole deal. It's still great, but it's just a little frustrating :o/

[view in situ]
The world’s largest unexploded bomb

Jay, I could have simply said "Luckily it's not under my farm", but this way I get to have a friendly dig at you Belgiums as well ;o)

And your beach trips sound excellent - I think I would have…

[view in situ]

Whoops! How right you (both) are.

I shall change that now :o)

[view in situ]

That map _does_ show that the bombs are in Belgium... are you getting confused over what the maps show?

The left hand one depicts the countries, and clearly shows the two towns as being in…

[view in situ]
Trip 1: itinerary

I am rather lucky, aren't I Karen?

Thank heavens for the Internet, that's all I can say :o)

[view in situ]

I've been to NYC twice now and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I don't think I'd like to go back - it didn't hold so much allure for me that I'd visit again and leave other parts of the States…

[view in situ]
Frickin’ mouth ulcers

Holy cow!

Well, Dale, it's nice to know (in an awful way) that I'm not alone in this :o/

Good luck to you too, fella.

[view in situ]
Sour crop

That had me giggling away this morning :oD

[view in situ]

So far my research has found the following quoted as signs of lunacy:

[1] throwing stones at strangers
[2] regressing into childhood
[3] infatuation with distorting your face in the…

[view in situ]

I think the oil and yogurt are used becauese the fermenting food causes an acidic buildup in the crop, and that helps to counteract that.

[view in situ]
Tidying up

Thanks Amanda :o)

I like this photo of yours:
http://www.lyptonvillage.org/shutt…

Great eyes.

[view in situ]

No Chris, it's 'when' - my new mac is sitting at a friend's house, just waiting to be picked up when I visit him in two weeks!

17in G4 Powerbook with 1.5GB of RAM.... Mmmmmm....…

[view in situ]

Marc, I must admit I don't use any software for sorting the images out - I just use the winXP file system.

Every time I take some photos they go into a folder marked with the date and a…

[view in situ]

Paul, I think the dog is a mix between a South African Cattle dog, an Australian Collie, and something else (which I can't recall). It's certainly an amazing working dog -- well, they both are.

[view in situ]

When you have such a wonky face as mine and you want to do self-portraits, you're not left with much to photograph other than other bits of your body... and doing the back means your face is hidden…

[view in situ]

Ha, that made me laugh, Karen :oD

[view in situ]

Yes, I wish I'd bought a DVD writer much earlier... this has taken days and days and days - a terrilbe waste of time.

Do it while it's manageable!

[view in situ]

See, I told you I was a Killing Machine... maybe next time you'll take my IM karate attacks more seriously.

[view in situ]
Cheep cheep, baaaa

"Well, vive to that, and an eclair for both of us" :o)

[view in situ]

I think we used to do ear tags, but when the lambs are born you have to spray them otherwise you can't tell who goes with what without catching everything and reading the tag.

We also sprayed…

[view in situ]

Maybe it was a sign? Like those patches of rising damp people find and claim is the spitting image of Jesus, or a sugar cube that looks like Muhammad from a certain angle, in the right…

[view in situ]

I'm glad Jon has picked up on that. I'd like to state here and now that anyone caught writing with a biro on any of our animals is going to get a good kicking. If you want to scribble on something…

[view in situ]
Dominique

Dad just muttered that "lot's of people use it", but I think you're right, Al; I've never seen that funny little green bottle outside their bathroom.

Oh, I'm wrong! They've changed it, bottle…

[view in situ]

Actually that's a lie - cookies work for me on either url, though I don't understand why :o/

[view in situ]

I think it's to do with the url - sometimes people visit to:
http://www.1976design.com/

and other times to:
http://1976design.com/

The cookies only work with the www. one.
I can't figure…

[view in situ]

Deb, it's just a photobooth picture, taken at Brussles train station (we were on our way back from a (very nice) short holiday to Brugge).

No tweaking needed :o)

[view in situ]

Ha! Thanks Tom, now I smell like my Dad :oD

[view in situ]

Grayson, we were a couple for a little over a year - living together the whole time - and it's been a little over two years since we broke up.

Even 12 months after it happened I couldn't bare to…

[view in situ]

Memories are much more powerful than photos, you're right Sian. I wrote tons about that, but then got rid of it all -- I'm not very good at writing on matters of the heart.

*Bing Bong*
Will a…

[view in situ]

Um... two and a bit years, Sergio. Nice to finally have that monkey off my back :o)

[view in situ]

I ought to point out that she's not dead - we just broke up.

I didn't realise it sounded like that until someone kindly pointed it out :op

[view in situ]
Photo manipulation

I'm sure this is one of those arguments, where neither side can truly convince the other to change their point off view.

Oh well :o)

[view in situ]

Ben, Stefan's right -- all the colour and noise was already there in the original, I just brought it out.

The reason it's so grainy is cause it was shot with a 400 ASA film, and then scanned in…

[view in situ]

Stefan, I'd take issue with some of your points there:

----
"Although I don't mind altering the brightness and contrast of a photo, or cropping it to a suitable format, but rearranging the…

[view in situ]

Which is why I said "I don't know that this is entirely a good idea."

On the one hand I'd like to help people, but on the other hand it's nice to retain some of the mystery of how you do…

[view in situ]
Quotations

That's a great link, thanks Margaret!

[view in situ]

Stuart, you know far too much about far too many odd things ;o)

[view in situ]
Retro: La criada

I got it years (4?) ago from an image library called SuperStock. The collection is called 'Vintage'.

I think I asked to get a CD with low-res images on for mock-up purposes.

[view in situ]

She was like a Mexican Ginger Rogers, singing and dancing and hopping around tapping her feet together :o)

They're good those photos aren't they? They're from a CD I have of old, black and white…

[view in situ]
A pair for every day of the week

I dunno, Phil - and they were all different sizes as well, some tiny ones, some huge ones.

Very odd :o)

[view in situ]

Damn you, Hans!

The image I put on the web is only 1600px wide. Although the full one is about 1800 wide, I figured no-one would be browsing about 1600px and so it'd be a waste of…

[view in situ]

Thanks Alistair, but that's going to be first on my list of things to do (once I find a place to live) - I have to keep working and I can't do that without web access...

[view in situ]

I'm always so paranoid I check about a billion times. I'm worried I might have accidently left a hunting knife in my coat or something bizzare.

But I can imagine my mother doing it, I must admit…

[view in situ]

No, you're right, I haven't really posted about it before.

I'm off to live in San Francisco for three months, to take photos and generally hang out. I have to come back to the UK for a friend's…

[view in situ]
Retro: Arizona poems (in jest)

Well, mktime gets (creates) a unix timestamp for a date [1], and gmmktime gets a unix timestamp for a GMT date [2].

I was using the gmmktime on a date that the server was returning, but the…

[view in situ]

Ah, I fixed the calendar, it was due to improper use of PHP's gmmktime().

Thanks for spotting that, chaps.

[view in situ]
God is in the typos

We've got it all 'round here :op

[view in situ]
Some photos of home

Everything runs off the laptop, Colin. Though I am connected to my parents' desktop machine, and that's where all my MP3s sit.

It's a Dell Inspiron 8100 before anyone asks, and the screen is a…

[view in situ]

Thanks Neal, I've seen that before - amazing isn't it?

[view in situ]

Those things on the ceiling are actually what started the whole post - they're glow in the dark stars, and you stick them on your ceiling when you're a kid…

[view in situ]

Sure:

http://1976design.com/blog/commonp…
http://1976design.com/blog/commonp…

[view in situ]

I do use a merging program for some things (in fact, the 'office' one was done with a merging program), but the other ones, the messy, complex ones, I just do by hand.

The program I use is just…

[view in situ]

Excellent!

I'm terribly unfit really - I'm blessed with a good physique that seems to withstand anything I throw at it (like sitting in front of a computer for 18hrs a day), but I'm no-where…

[view in situ]

"where you lay on your stomach and push yourself up with your arms" - that's right, we call it a 'press-up' here, and in the US it's a 'push-up'.

The bar is used for bar-curls (with some of…

[view in situ]

It used to be orange, now it's just-the-orange-side-of-yellow.

Very nice when the sun comes in in the morning - everything glows :o)

[view in situ]

Markku, they're easy - just take a whole bunch of photos of something, then slap them all into one Photoshop document and overlay them until you're happy with the result.

(Sometimes you might…

[view in situ]

Tony, I do like the gym ball, and it's been really good for my back - when I use it properly.

The problem is that I can't get close enough to my desk to sit on it correctly 100% of the time, so…

[view in situ]

Well, you're already here, Jon, so I figured it couldn't get any worse ;o)

[view in situ]

Yes, the ball is my chair. Actually, I have two chairs, I have the ball and also one of those 'praying' chairs, where you sort of sit and kneel at the same time.

The ball can be found…

[view in situ]

It's our computer room, and it's the one room in the house we've never redecorated.

The last people to live here (20 years ago!) installed a very odd fish pond thing in the corner (those blue…

[view in situ]

Re. fish-eye lens: tell me about it. I plan to get one when I'm in the States, and prices are lower...

[view in situ]

It's the same every April the 1st, the damn RAF think it'd be funny to bomb us. The first year, yes, it was a bit of a laugh, but after that it's just become tiresome.

Ooh, gotta go, here comes…

[view in situ]
Retro: Very arranged marriages

Thanks for explaining the system you two, that was very interesting.

[view in situ]

Niket, I know it's rather rude to ask, but how old are you?

I'm amazed that young people want to find their partners that way... though that said, I guess it's a good way to cut to the chase -…

[view in situ]

Oh, it says "Online edition of India's National Newspaper".

Are they lying?

The swines!

[view in situ]
March 2004
Easy CSS drop shadows

"Create a 2x2 table..."

Oooh, let me stop you there, Chris. This code is all about achieving a drop-shadow effect without having to resort to extraneous mark-up, and _especially_ not resorting…

[view in situ]

The simplest way would be to grab the PNG file from Sergio's follow-up article:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles…

Otherwise just use the photoshop file I supplied (in my post, above),…

[view in situ]

Check out my (messy) CSS file, and a post like this one:
http://1976design.com/blog/archive…

The style you're interested in is called 'img-gal'.

That should hopefully do what you want.

[view in situ]

Oh, well then you're buggered. Sorry! :o)

[view in situ]

No, you're right, that's not possible with my simple method.

But see here:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles…

[view in situ]
Retro: Adventures on Speedway Boulevard

It's a "Beware of Pedestrians" sign that someone has stuck a hula-hoop on, to make a "Beware of Hoola-hoopers" sign :o)

[view in situ]

They better have an IHOP or a Waffle House in San Francisco, or I'm going to be dissapointed :o)

[view in situ]

I've been trying to think of one, Karen.

When you're out and about in the day, the crappiest place to eat is usually McDonalds or Burger King.
In the evening it's usually a chinese or indian…

[view in situ]

My cousin Kim (an Australian) was in Alaska with an Italian friend a few years back. One of the people there asked them where they were from:

kim: "I'm from Australia"
friend: "And I'm from…

[view in situ]
Retro: There ain’t no water in that there river

Karen, my story about the people I met at the bus stop is now up:
http://www.1976design.com/blog/arc…

[view in situ]

Writing tips? Gosh... um, not really, I don't know much myself - I just get the basics of the story down, then umm and ahh over it for a long time until I'm happy with the tone and direction, then…

[view in situ]

Nice story, Karen :o)

I have one of those 'talked with a felon' tales lined up as well (I'll post it next week), and oddly enough it happened at a bus stop - public transport puts you in touch…

[view in situ]

Or, I guess it could be an erection, the size of a shitsu dog... that might make my story appeal to a different readership...

[view in situ]

An erection that a male shitsu dog gets.

And being very little dogs...

[view in situ]

Sorry Chris - I've uploaded a larger version and linked it through the image in the post, as usual.

You can even make out Jim, sitting on his porch :o)

[view in situ]
Flexible floats 3

I guess Mark meant this:
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/…

[view in situ]

Not at all, Ben, I just bumble my way through these things with the help of much cleverer friends :o)

[view in situ]

Ben, that's pretty much what I was doing in Version 2, but I really wanted to get rid of the loop. Loops take time, and I'd like to make the thing as fast as possible.

But yes, if I was trying…

[view in situ]

That's because the overall containing div (div#container) is sized to a max-width of 60em. So when you reduce your font size, you reduce the width of the container, which reduces the width of the…

[view in situ]

Ah, thanks Andrew, I'll have to sniff that out as well. Damnit.

[view in situ]

I found the same thing, Andy, I have no idea why it behaves like that. That image file is the dropshadow for all the pictures, applied via CSS - maybe IE doesn't cache images that are mentioned in…

[view in situ]
Retro: Arizona poems (in jest)

Hee hee :o)

[view in situ]

In fact it does highlight the day that the post was made (the day in question sits on a #eee coloured square), but I fear it may be too understated for your monitors to cope with. Subtle colouring…

[view in situ]

Damnit, so it is :o(

I shall look into it...

[view in situ]
Flexible floats 2

Comments are now closed for this entry, please leave any remarks relating to this stuff over at 'Flexible Floats 3'

http://www.1976design.com/blog/arc…

Thanks - Dunstan

[view in situ]
Flexible floats

Comments are now closed for this entry, please leave any remarks relating to this stuff over at 'Flexible Floats 3'

http://www.1976design.com/blog/arc…

Thanks - Dunstan

[view in situ]

Okay, new code posted here:
http://1976design.com/blog/archive…

[view in situ]

Hans - the three rows appear because IE doesn't support max-width. It's the only page on the site that does look better in IE, you're absolutely right.

However, the shitty behaviour it exhibits…

[view in situ]

Hmm, you're right, Brahm. I'll have to look into that at some point in the future... thanks for the bug report.

[view in situ]

Right, I've uploaded the new code to the Reading page, and it should work on everything except that older version of Moz that Oliver mentions.

I'll write up a revised post after Mark gets back…

[view in situ]

Okay, thanks for everyone's testing - I just wanted to say that Mark's comments (see above) have made me rethink how I'm doing this, and I now have a much better method.

I'll post it here when…

[view in situ]

"Nice effect. Too bad there were so many hoops to jump through just to get it to work."

Yes. The two little CSS rules aren't so bad, but any kind of 'hack' is a pain.

"The only gripe I have…

[view in situ]

Bugger me, _my_ version of IE is dying now as well!

Hmm, well, I'll make the changes that Mark suggests and see if that has any effect.

[view in situ]

That's great, thanks Mark. I'll go through and try to make those changes :o)

[view in situ]

Ooh, well spotted, Justin, I've fixed that bug now :o)

It's amazing how bugs sneak in isn't it? I must have tried that page 20 times before I put it live, and the moment I do, two people (one…

[view in situ]

Really?

I'm on XP Pro, and both FF 0.8 and IE 6.0 work perfectly.

Can anyone else confirm or deny this problem on Win2000?
I'm not so worried about FF, but I'd rather IE didn't die :o)

[view in situ]

I love that book, and I like the audio tape even more - Hugh Laurie reads it, and he's just perfect :o)

[view in situ]

That's right - I had to remove the float for Opera (that's what the extra CSS rules were for).

So what you're seeing is what I meant you to see :o)

[view in situ]
Retro: Six generationas of baloney

:oD

[view in situ]

He probably tells that story _everywhere_, Mike:

"Oh go on, ask me what kind of sandwich! Pleeeeease!"

[view in situ]

You're right - it *could* have been a multi-step recipie for "embalmed pig trotter and slightly-ruffled lettuce on rye", but I think, having met the guy, that it's not likely.

I'm guessing three…

[view in situ]

Okay, new rule on this site - no more 'Stoopid American' comments!

The Brits think they're doing me a favour by sticking it to the Yanks, and of course the Yanks can't help but respond.

But…

[view in situ]
Server swap

You're right, Rakesh, I felt the urge to go back to basics, so for now the tooltips have gone. Sorry!

[view in situ]

Thanks, Sparticus :o)

In fact, he's now Super-duper Naked Dunstan, because (a) I made him into a link, and (b) the :hover should work on IE as well.

[view in situ]

Things are going wonky... but I'm fixing them as fast as I can *sigh*

[view in situ]
Eggs, fresh from the hen house

Pam, I'm afraid I have no idea as to your questions - I'm not a chicken expert. Maybe you should speak to your local vet, I expect he/her would be able to help you. Good luck!

[view in situ]
Retro: Ordering food in America

Yes, I should say that Molly is a jolly good sport for letting me tell (and embellish) all these stories about her and her beautiful home town of Tucson, Arizona.

What a gal.

[view in situ]

They are, Margaret, in the UK you just tend to order what's on the menu.

You can say "I don't want chips, could I possibly have veg instead, please?" but that's about as far as it tends to…

[view in situ]
Putting your underwear on backwards: the Results

Ah ha! It seems I'm not alone:
http://willy.boerland.com/myblog/n…

[view in situ]

[M], I have many pairs of underpants, but they all fall into one of those four categories.

Rough count:

[1] Helly Hansen walking briefs: 2 pairs
[2] Jockey travel briefs: 2 pairs
[3] Marks…

[view in situ]

*warms hands up*

[view in situ]

I really can't believe there's a market for M&S thongs in the UK. (S&M thongs, maybe, but that's another matter.)

How often is someone browsing through M&S in their beige raincoat, thinking,…

[view in situ]

Well observed, Sarah, that's exactly what they're for.

A well observed tradition in rugby is to warm your hands by putting them down the front of your pants, a fleece lined pair of these would…

[view in situ]

I think I'll pass on that, Danny :op

[view in situ]

There's not a lot of gusseting there, Sian, and it all lies flat.
Maybe mine aren't exactly that model, they look a bit more see-thru than mine...

[view in situ]

That's the wind-proof front!

[view in situ]

I'm not sure, Teller.
I've written to Science, The New Scientist, Scientific American, The Lancet, and Nature, but so far, no respones...

...maybe my email's broken?

[view in situ]
Putting your underwear on backwards

"Dunstan, why would you want to admit that you had worn your underwear backwards?"

Science, Lindsey. It's all in the name of science...

[view in situ]

Thanks, Mark, as you probably worked out, I stole the idea off the 37signals guys.

I really wanted it for when people post comments that require moderation - people weren't realising their…

[view in situ]

Hmm, I won't deactivate it, Garoo, what I'll do is:

If the textarea has been modified I'll make 'Preview' bold, and 'Post' normal.

If the textarea hasn't been modified I'll make 'Preview'…

[view in situ]
Retro: Everyone likes Cox

*shamed*

Sorry, Ian! :oD

[view in situ]

Names make for funny business:
http://www.news.com.au/common/stor…

[view in situ]

Hey, sorry about your dog, Chad, she looked nice.

We used to have Springer Spaniels (what was Priss?), and it broke my heart when they died :o(

[view in situ]

Oh, I like that one, Snowflake!

[view in situ]
Walking on Dartmoor

In the Lakes... I sat on a gate and hung my bottom over one side.
In the Alps... I went behind a bush.
On Dartmoor... I didn't go for two days.

Well, you did ask :o)

[view in situ]

Whoops! Good spot, Andrew, thanks.

[view in situ]

They're fully grown, just very small. An awfully cute.
http://www.corboy.co.uk/dartmoor_p…

[view in situ]

Andrew, your trip sounds wonderful, and is something I've wanted to do since I read Bill Bryson's book on the Appalachian Trail (read it if you haven't already).

Good luck, sir!

[view in situ]
When I was…

It really was a _very_ short skirt... *dreamy reminisce*

[view in situ]

You have to get the accent right (luckily I'm pretty good at those, but then, you're irish, so...), you have to smile a lot, you have to be funny, and you have to just say and do whatever you want…

[view in situ]

Yes, 'best bucket' :o)

Buckets tend to go through various stages of muckiness on a farm, and I believe at the time the bucket I took was the cleanest, and shiniest of the bunch. The Best Bucket.

[view in situ]

Oh dear, well, glad to have cheered you up a wee bit, Sian :o)

[view in situ]

Alastair is three years older than me - so he would have been five at the time.

[view in situ]

Really? Excellent, because I'm going to America in a couple of months... I shall start perfecting my beautifully enunciated Queen's English ;o)

[view in situ]

I've tried to fill in a couple of the blank years - still missing ages 1 and 4 though, but never mind...

[view in situ]

Ah, good spot, David.
I think that was my first 'Star Crush'.

[view in situ]

Actually it's a Springer Spaniel, I'm not sure of the difference (maybe there isn't any) but it's one of the many puppies that our dog, Jenny, had over the years.

Man, were they cute...

[view in situ]

It took hours and hours, and it hurt like hell. There wasn't much to do, where I lived back then...

[view in situ]
CSS drop shadows, extended

[1] Open up Photoshop.
[2] Create an 850x850px file.
[3] Fill the background to the colour of your site background.
[4] Create a new layer.
[5] Draw an 800x800 square in the middle of the this…

[view in situ]

Ah.

Well those tabby-things are the best thing I've ever used on a web browser. I love them. I didn't used to, but FB changed my mind, and now I can't imagine life without them - non-tabbed…

[view in situ]

Very cool.

It would have been even cooler if I'd done it myself, of course... but never mind :o)

[view in situ]

Actually Sian, I think you must have visited my site using FF before, because Naked Dunstan has never worked in IE - that bit uses the sliding doors technique, which isn't IE-friendly.

IE…

[view in situ]

Phil, I saw your post on the forum, and your code looks great - the lack of extra markup is spot on, that was my main aim, so it's nice to see you stuck with that as well.

Well done, sir…

[view in situ]

Scott, I'm waiting for Andrew Heyward [1] to develop his table sorting code. He was very kindly taking some personal time to add in some features for me, and as with most "Sure, I'll do that this…

[view in situ]

He's there isn't he? On the right?

Or do you mean, when am I going to make something new?

I've got a couple of cool things in the wings, but I'm waiting for a very kind person to do some JS…

[view in situ]
Light Angels

I think (and my mother would agree here) that I look sweet and harmless.

Grannies are probably clutching their hands to their chests and saying "Awww...", young women are suddenly finding the…

[view in situ]

I knew all of them from blogging, but they didn't all know each others' sites (until I sent the invites out).

Andy, Jeremy and Richard knew each other in the real world, but that was all.

I…

[view in situ]
Snow, by torchlight

I took the photos myself, Ciaran - I set the camera up on a tripod, gave myself a good depth of focus, hit the button and ran in front of the camera while the timer counted down.

No-one else…

[view in situ]
February 2004
Snow, by torchlight

The purple streaks _are_ figures! It's me! :op

Did you click and see the larger versions, Chris? You can see it a bit better then.

[view in situ]

The shutter time was 30 seconds, at 800 asa, and... um, with something like an aperture of 8 or 9.5.

I would have done more, but that's the longest the camera does before going into BULB mode.

[view in situ]

The dog has fun doing anything, as long as it's not sitting in the house.

Plenty of things to sniff outside, and that always makes her happy :o)

[view in situ]

It's a Canon EOS 10D with a 28-135mm IS USM Canon lens and a 1GB Flash Card:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca…

[view in situ]

Thanks guys!

There's more of this kind of thing here, if you're interested:
http://1976design.com/photography/…

Those images show my friends waving burning branches about - a bit more…

[view in situ]
Snow, at last

I was thinking that today, Al. I thought maybe I'd write to a file the time and date of the last occurance of snow, and then if less than 24hrs had passed since the snowy period ended, it'd still…

[view in situ]

We didn't have an awful lot, but enough to cover everything.

I have these super-duper adventure-racing shoes, they're full gortex and everything and while I was out there I thought I'd go for a…

[view in situ]
Working in America

The visa waiver thing only ends for those people who don't have the little red passports, or for people applying for new passports. As my little red one doesn't run out for years, I'll be okay…

[view in situ]

It seems under the visa-waiver program, anyone from the UK would qualify for a B1 or B2 visa automatically (unless they're a criminal), so that's the 3-month thing taken care of.

I guess the…

[view in situ]

They don't, Stew, the US departments in this area are the worst in the world - they basically don't want you to visit, and make it as hard to achieve as possible.

I've half been down this route…

[view in situ]
Missing socks

Both on the sock-, and sex-front.

I loved Prince George's character, Hugh Laurey was just perfect.

[Having just burnt the World's first, and only dictionary]

George: Isn't it, er...Isn't…

[view in situ]
Re-designing comment forms

I used to have two buttons here, and in fact the code for all that to work is still in place, it's just a case of me re-inserting the 'post' button... but I'm going to keep it like this for a wee…

[view in situ]

Trent, your points are valid (though I did mention the second one myself in the post), and that's why I've structured my 'first time' commentor form as I have, but I think that after that there's…

[view in situ]

Oh yes, so you did!

Yours looks nicer than mine though, because it's more compact and with better instructions... hmm... damnit sometimes I hate my design.

Also, your idea of the signature is…

[view in situ]

Thank you, Ste, for forseeing my 'unforseen problem'.
The cookie option stays :o)

[view in situ]

Good point about the cookie, Matt, personally I've never clicked the 'No' button on one of those things. I left it in because I couldn't understand why someone would _not_ want to store their…

[view in situ]

Thanks for all the feeback people, and keep your comments coming.

It's all very well me coding this stuff but I only have myself to test it on until it goes live, so all your thoughts and…

[view in situ]

"I think people should be smart enough to double check their comments before posting"

James, I'd love it if people checked what they wrote before posting, but many of them don't.

Think of…

[view in situ]

Keith, the level I'm looking at here is trying to remove those little bits of thoughtless design - the things that mean you have to scroll that extra inch, or look past that extra paragraph of…

[view in situ]

Oh yes, that too :)

[view in situ]

Ah, well the 'forced preview' isn't part of the layout thing - I removed the 'post straight off' button because I got lots of comments from people saying "Damn, I wish I could edit my comments for…

[view in situ]
Firefox errors and Firebird extensions

Jansen, that happened to me at www.dabs.com - but I found that resizing the page brought the scrollbars back.

But it's only happened on one site to me, so sorry, I can't help you out there.

[view in situ]

I didn't back my bookmarks up and everything is fine in the new browser... but I haven't uninstalled my old copy of FB yet.

[view in situ]

Darice, Aaron - Documentation?! Good god people, I'm a techy! I don't have time to read the carefully written, and obviously placed documentation!

Whatever will they think of next?

;o)

[view in situ]

Ah! I'm glad it helped someone else out :o)

[view in situ]
Poppy and the corn field

Actually, Photoshop is the reason they're so sharp ;o)

But you're right, it is a great camera, and _so_ much better than anything else I've played with in terms of image quality.

I just wish…

[view in situ]

Well Antoine, I certainly wouldn't have Poppy in a city - she goes a bit mad just being in the house all day, and if she didn't have fields to run around in, and rabbit holes to burrow in, and deer…

[view in situ]

It's a Canon EOS 10D with a 28-135mm IS USM Canon lens and a 1GB Flash Card:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca…

[view in situ]
Tell us everything! Well, not quite everything…

Because he's evil!
No, because I forgot... fixed now - thanks David :o)

[view in situ]

I flipped the image - it's a pun on the subject, and the source of the image - The George Bush Center for Intelligence.

[view in situ]

Actually, although I gave the Americans a ribbing a few posts ago, I get just as many daft emails from Brits as from them - so I guess lack of humour isn't geographical.

After all, we are the…

[view in situ]
Cutting your own hair

I don't think you're too far off there, Todd :op

[view in situ]

Tom - my hair really doesn't do well under clippers, it sticks out at funny angles, and if I go that short then it's just a fuzzy mess - I really need the scissors-touch to give me any chance of…

[view in situ]

Sorry Sarah!

To quote Steve Martin: "Oh, ho, ho, irony! We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was getting tired of…

[view in situ]

Sarah: "What the heck is a Buzzy Dipper???!!!"

It says 'Clipper' but the font makes the 'cl' look like a 'd' :op

There _should_ be something called a 'Buzzy Dipper' though...

[view in situ]
Twenty-one photos

I'm using a Canon EOS 10D with a 28-135 IS USM Canon lens:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca…

And yes, I shoot practically everything with a short DOF, it's my favourite way of…

[view in situ]

I'm adding in the black frames manually, Wilhelm. In another project (a photo gallery for Coke) I've used Imagemagic to do just that, but in this case my server doesn't support it.

My new server…

[view in situ]

Right, I've added captions :o)

[view in situ]

Jeremy, the letterbox effect is just done to preserve the grid layout - my floats wouldn't work if everything wasn't the same height.

On my photo site [1] I add in the black areas using padding…

[view in situ]

Margaret, I can't find a larger version of the Lakes picture, I think I must have scanned a print in from a film-shot at some point, so that's all I have I'm afraid.

As for the rose, well…

[view in situ]

Yes, Tom, it is 'hard drive', I'm a lazy writer sometimes... corrected.

[view in situ]

Yes, the little boy is my nephew, Lucas, and that was taken in Italy on his second birthday. The photo of the little girl was taken at the same event (she's Swedish).

As for the ALT attribute,…

[view in situ]

Nick, it's a lamb, not a goat! :op

They put those red coats on the winter-born lambs to keep the wind-chill off them for their first few days in the fields.

I think they cost about 20p each,…

[view in situ]

"Do you switch shooting modes for the B&W or use the computer?"

It's all digital, so I just use Photoshop to do it.

And as for image captions - yes, you're right, I'm going to have to add…

[view in situ]
Poppies everywhere

Ah, but look at Jon's comment (#7):
"That title wouldn't be spoofing 'Teletubbies Everywhere' now would it?"

Yes, it is :o)

[view in situ]

Hey Tony,

Yes, end of May through to the 20th of July. I'm sure I'll be posting about it nearer the time (and during the trip) so bung me an email when I'm actually there :o)

As for the…

[view in situ]

It's a digital SLR, Karen - a Canon 10D:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca…

[view in situ]

Ah. I've been to Colorado, and Arizona, but not quite made it to Texas.

But if I ever find myself on the run from the Law, I'll head your way and you can hide me in your church. (Or behind one…

[view in situ]

Out of interest, are people getting that they can click on the photo to get a larger version?

I'm wondering if, in cases like this where there's no text, some kind of symbol on the image is…

[view in situ]

Give that man a Magic Windmill!

[view in situ]

Thanks Jim!

I don't know where you live, but I'm going to be in San Francisco for about three months (May - July), if you're anywhere near there :o)

[view in situ]

I just take a bunch of photos of her running around (without moving the camera), then cut out the dog from each photo (you don't have to do that very carefully either because as the camera hasn't…

[view in situ]

The dog is called Poppy.

Sorry, I forget not everyone reads this blog on a regular basis :o)

[view in situ]
Grrr, hear me roar

Mum couldn't face the fact that you'd run off to foreign lands with 'that woman', and took to drinking. All the house-keeping money is frittered away on alcohol now... you have no idea of the…

[view in situ]

We MGM Lions pride ourselves (boom boom!) on our teeth ;o)

[view in situ]

Ha ha ;o)

[view in situ]

What happened to her? She left uni and went to crew on a boat that was sailing around the World. Some rich man's yacht.

I phoned her parents a few times to see how she was and was always told…

[view in situ]

Yes, that's her :o)

[view in situ]
Poppy and the deer

Poppy is a JR, yes, and she's an utter lunatic.

She's very well behaved with children, nice and calm, but with anyone, or anything else, she's completely bonkarooney :o)

[view in situ]

Good point, Chris - it's 'scents' :o)

[view in situ]
Site updates

Perfic :o)

[view in situ]

Take out the onload thing from your body tag, add your scrollbars script into the same file as the blockquotes one, then add fixscrollbars() into the function runScripts(), so when runScripts runs…

[view in situ]

Karl, see the comments above yours for a fix to that error.
As for its use, I meant the JS file's inclusion, that wasn't very clear.

If you're wondering how to code your blockquotes then there…

[view in situ]
Anna Riley, wish number one

Hopkinson, you seem to have a heavy hand on the exclamation marks, are you drunk, sir?

And I'll have you know I ride with style and grace... that fall was... well, it was down to bad coaching. I…

[view in situ]

Any old wish, whatever people think they're missing in their life... a perfect partner, the ability to sing, cool hair, free croissants every morning, to own a newspaper, to live in Fiji...…

[view in situ]

Are there no ladies out there with a lust for something? Come on girls!

[view in situ]
Dynamic @import CSS files using PHP

I don't know why people bother trying to help me out - this is something like the fourth instance of someone explaining this method to me ages ago, and me failing to take it in.

Thanks for…

[view in situ]

Because then I'd have 93 different CSS files with two rules in each one (the weather image and the night/day border). Not very manageable.

[view in situ]

I am _so_ bad at my Evolt email - I don't understand why some of it fails to enter my brain. Maybe because I get it in digest mode :o/

In fact, I just checked, and I've never seen your message…

[view in situ]

Someone else raised that issue, Jemal.

The reason I don't do something like Hivelogic uses is that his images won't be cached, and mine are. If I don't use specific and unique image names then…

[view in situ]
Providing feedback on comment submission

Personally I don't know anything about MT, so maybe you could ask on the MT developers site (is there one?) and point people here for an explanation of what you want.

I'd be happy to help an MT…

[view in situ]

Maybe it needs moving up, so it's above the submission buttons?
Or maybe I can stick your name into the placeholder... or bold 'Your post is currently being held for moderation'?

Hmm, I'll…

[view in situ]
More syndication feeds added

Oh dear, well I got a few friends to test the feeds in their feed readers and the images showed up, so I thought it'd be ok. Hmm... look slike I'll have to slap in some more PHP to add on the…

[view in situ]

Ah! I've been trying to track down where those errors were coming from and it was driving me nuts - in fact I was giving it another go when I got your comment notification. Good timing,…

[view in situ]
Easy CSS drop shadows

Karl, that's right. And the reason it's 10px is that there is 4px of padding and 1px of margin on either side of the image:

1px + 4px + image width + 4px + 1px = image width + 10px

So that's…

[view in situ]

Laurent, the only difference is that a decorative image floats off to the right, and is really there only to add decoration to the post. An illustrative image sits on the left and disrupts the flow…

[view in situ]
January 2004
More syndication feeds added

Oh, well that's a bit stupid of them, because as far as I can tell you only need to specify isPermalink if it's _not_ a permalink:

http://feedvalidator.org/docs/erro…

Never mind, I…

[view in situ]
Our garden and the surrounding fields

Mark, some of the photos are taken with the 10D, some are taken with the D60 (it's predecessor), some are taken with a little point-and-shoot digital, some are taken with a little point-and-shoot…

[view in situ]

"...sorry for the dumb 'Q' then."

Not at all, I don't actually have any links to it here... maybe I ought to :o/

Yes, I'll alter the Colophon to reflect that. Thanks :o)

[view in situ]

Well Colin, I already have a big photo gallery on my 'photo' site, so I don't really want to make another one here.

http://www.1976design.com/photogra…

(That site needs a huge overhaul,…

[view in situ]

Hey Nicole, that's not rhubarb, it's beetroot :o)
The rhubarb is growing under the bell (and a layer of dry leaves).

As for the single bud, I've always called it rosehip, but I might be…

[view in situ]

Thanks Jon - they're nowhere near as sharp as they could be as it was all handheld in not very good light. Most of them are 800 ISO but luckily the D10 does a good job of keeping the grain down on…

[view in situ]

Oh no! Sorry about this Jemmel, but the images don't fall under that CC license (I've updated the copyright statement to reflect that).

I'd forgotten that someone might want to use them, and…

[view in situ]

Thanks for your comments guys :o)

The camera is a 6.3MP Canon 10D digital SLR, with a 28-135mm USM IS lense and a 1GB Compact Flash card:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca…

It's…

[view in situ]
How I got involved in web development

Thanks Dominik!

*plays Chuckie Egg*

[view in situ]

Holy crap Aaron.

That's one of the best uses for a blog I've seen. If it's genuinely helping you then that's great, good luck with it!

[view in situ]

Stuart, every time I install a Windows program and see it dumping files all over my HD I think of the Acorn, and it's lovely single directory for each program...

Do you know I used to edit Acorn…

[view in situ]

Jon. Chuckie Egg is my single favourite game of all time.
I'd play that for hours on our ZX Spectrum 48K, lying on the carpet with the tape player/loader next to me.

I'd love to have that on…

[view in situ]

Ah, Stuart, don't tell me you were a RISC OSer as well?!

Actually it wasn't ProArtisan, I never got on with that program. I've done some searching and the software I used was Photodesk…

[view in situ]
Cutting your own hair

Yeah, I know, longer, scruffier hair looks cooler. But for some reason the length of my hair is directly related to how energetic I feel.

Long hair makes me feel mopey.
Short hair makes me feel…

[view in situ]

I think it's more likely to be a male thing, I would imagine girls would be slightly more worried about the outcome. Personally I don't mind how it turns out as it'll grow back pretty…

[view in situ]

Hee, thank you Mr Clark ;o)

[view in situ]

No reason Pedro, other than the fact that I've always wanted to give it a go. Plus the Internet was broken when I got up to check my email this morning, so with some spare time on my hands I…

[view in situ]

Ah, very nice, Huphtur. You went a bit shorter than me I see. I just shoved my fingers in my hair and cut around them.

Nice wry smile :o)

[view in situ]

Well the first and last photos were taken about two and a half hours apart - cutting your own hair takes _ages_.

Well, it took me ages anyway :o)

(Actually I find that a hair cut does improve…

[view in situ]
Javascript image captions

Hi Karl,

Sorry, no, your code looks like my code, so I can't see what would be wrong. Are you getting any JS errors?

One thing to note - you can't use this with the image dropshadows (unless…

[view in situ]
Photos of chickens and the garden

Ooh, we never got a catalog, mum and dad just used to go along to a bird auction and see what there was... I wonder if they do catalogs in the UK?

On that site you linked to the artist is billed…

[view in situ]
A scientific weather garden

David, thanks for your comment - some responses:

[1] I like the sound of that a lot. I'll check it out, thank you.

[2] I could use a session variable you're right... I haven't up to now…

[view in situ]

Oh, I don't think so - I certainly didn't think they looked too much alike.

Sure the layout is similar, but there's only so many layouts you can have.

[view in situ]
Calendar girl

There isn't a link, Eduardo (not that I can see), so maybe the calendar isn't for public use... and as for the style issue, well, who cares, it's beautiful! :o)

[view in situ]

Sian, I know she's the MT lady, and what a great job she has, eh?

I'd love to be paid for developing a blogging tool, I've learnt so much doing this site, and had so much fun thinking things…

[view in situ]
Eric Meyer ate my Robot

Ha!
Good point, Cam :op

The football players would have all died out, bemoaning the loss of their alice bands and Versace luggage.

Trust the no-nonsense rugby lads to get straight to the…

[view in situ]

The reason I thought of this is I still see a few links to both those sites... and yet they're not updated.

When I was starting out those two sites were linked to from practically _every_ site I…

[view in situ]
Adding in tabs, blogmarks and a blogroll

KO, you know what? I'd kind of prefer it if you didn't right now, it's taken a lot of work to get it like this and the idea of giving it away immediately is a bit galling.

I can't stop you…

[view in situ]

Thanks guys, I'll have a play with the list-dots and try to up their visability a bit.

'Subtle' is very difficult to achieve on more than one display :op

[view in situ]

I've realised that people who don't use tabbed browsing seem to want a cookie set on the tabs, so they can click to a site, then use the back button to see the lists again.

I don't browse like…

[view in situ]

The pens on my desk... it's not been very exciting here recently :op

[view in situ]
Swimming with dolphins

I used a whole bunch of waterproof disposable cameras, Rich. You can see one in my hand in the first photo.

You can buy them to go down to varying depths. I used them for scuba diving as…

[view in situ]

I can see their logic, David. A dolphin is surely gonna find something that makes different noises more interesting than something that's just floating there, silently.

Either way, I'm sure we…

[view in situ]

Ah, my friend lived in Wellington (Diana Perry, on the off chance), so I spent a few days wandering its streets and the surrounding hills (those hills are great BTW, so nice to be able to step into…

[view in situ]

Well damn me, I never knew you were a Kiwi, Erin.
Where abouts are you from?

My mum and dad are heading off to NZ in a week's time, lucky swines... away for a month and a half.

*sigh*

Ho…

[view in situ]
An ASP version of time_since

Yup, that makes perfect sense Matt, and that's the way I'd like to see it. (Hopefully, that's how it works here.)

[view in situ]

Actually Matt, in making my blogroll I realised that it's not possible to tell when a person's site was updated in _their_ time - all the weblogs and blo.gs stuff gives you a UTC time and date and…

[view in situ]

I shouldn't even be using iframes actually mathew (they're not allowed in this version of xhtml), I'll be replacing them with styled-divs soon.

Sorry for the trouble!

[view in situ]

Hee hee, this is great though, I'd never have known this. I just presumed everyone would prefer the relative method.

Always nice to be reminded that it's dangerous to presume your choices will…

[view in situ]

"so was that two days since the poster's time or two days ago relative to my time."

2 days = 48 hours. It'd be the same regardless of which side you look at it from. It was updated '48 hours…

[view in situ]
Who, where, how?

Good thinking that man:

http://www.1976design.com/blog/arc…

I do have plans to link this into 'Characters' pages if it ever becomes appropriate.

Also worth noting is that a person's…

[view in situ]

Good ideas Stuart. But I feel the <cite> tag would have been inappropriate here - I've gone around and around thinking this one out, and I've come to the conclusion that the <cite>…

[view in situ]
Swingers

It's not often I laugh out loud over comments, Chris. But that one has me chuckling away here :oD

[view in situ]

Hee hee ;o)

[view in situ]

I used to work around the corner from Brick Lane (in London), and I'd often go and buy a huge bag of bagels from the 24-hour bagel shop. Lovely stuff.

Ooh, if you have your 3D specs handy (and…

[view in situ]

Yes it is set in LA, Ben - but San Francisco is where I'm planning on going for a while, so it was the first place that popped into my head :o)

Re. Heather Graham - she makes a nice cameo…

[view in situ]
Rudy Limeback

And I think we'll stop that thread of conversation right there! :op

[view in situ]

"However, I didn't know about that tightrope walk thing - gasp!"

I, er, I might have been exagerating a bit on that. Well, quite a lot in fact. Still, it livens things up a bit. Maybe he really…

[view in situ]

Maddening isn't it?
Some people just shouldn't bother making suggestions.

I hope you sent her to bed early to think about what she said ;o)

[view in situ]
Easy CSS drop shadows

That's true Chris, and yes, it's a shame that happens. But the lack of extra mark-up means it's a trade-off I'm happy with. Horses for courses and all that :o)

Thanks for stopping by, and for…

[view in situ]
Tender is the night

No, that's below and off to the left, out of site.

If that photo was turned around 180 degrees, it'd be looking out across the field and towards the sheep, like…

[view in situ]

Hey Stefan, thanks for writing such a good little story - I enjoyed reading that :op

I liked the image of you trying it on your head!

(I was thinking maybe it was a wicker fish net, like they…

[view in situ]

You got it :o)

[view in situ]
Friendly error handling

Hey rich,

I do kind of, if certain pages are loaded and no posts appear then it pops up a message saying "Sorry, no posts can be found, something must be wrong - why not go look at my photo site…

[view in situ]

Well, I'm kind of living in fairly land right now Nicole - I'm sure if I had bills and rent to pay I'd never get to do anything to this site. Thank you parents :o)

[view in situ]

Thanks Scott, presenting a consistent front is pretty important to me - I'm glad you think I'm getting there :o)

[view in situ]

Hi Sken, thanks for posting!

I did ponder doing days either side of the requested one, but to be honest it was about 3 in the morning when I wrote most of that stuff and I just wanted to post…

[view in situ]

Thanks Sian - I think you and I need to get out more ;o)

[view in situ]

Ro, yeah, that's MYSQL trying to be helpful. I don't think I can be bothered to take error checking that far though :o)

[view in situ]

The ever-helpful Stuart [1] is _maybe_ working on a cross-browser, more functional replacement for that increase/decrease widget. We shall see.

[1] http://www.kryogenix.org/

[view in situ]
On a slow safari to Dunstan-ville

Whoops! You're right, Owen, I seem to have forgotten to create the thunderstorms image... I'll have to do that when I get a sec. Thanks :o)

[view in situ]
Nice Titles revised

Randy, I blogged about a new version of this script [1] that a chap called Mark Warren has produced.

Go to his site to get the new version [2].

[1]…

[view in situ]
Why do authors ruin books?

That's the problem with well known genres I guess, the patterns are too well established so the 'suprise' isn't really a suprise any more. You just have to hope that the whole thing is sufficiently…

[view in situ]

Rene: "I can see the editor now with his read pen poring through the manuscript adding helpful hints like 'You should put a clue here!'"

That's a very Dilberty scene :op

I was going to say…

[view in situ]
Caterpillar, clitoris, butterfly

That made us all laugh here :oD

[view in situ]

She's 83, Steven. She's not mad or anything, she's just full of fun and mischief. Lots of mischief :o)

[view in situ]

Colin, my Grandmother is way beyond any influence I might have on her - and I say again, she would _like_ those cards :op

[view in situ]

Whoops! Fixed. Thanks David :o)

[view in situ]
NicerTitles

Whoops, that was me being stupid and forgetting the file I was playing with was also affecting live pages.

Sorry, all fixed now.

[view in situ]
Bandwidth theft and flame-bait

All of that's already in place, Steven :o)

[view in situ]
The Great Antonio

Ah! Thanks for that Antoine, it's really nice to get a personal account of the story :o)

[view in situ]
Soul Brother Number One

"Wazzu wuzzu!" is a direct quote from one of his performances - I kid you not :o)

[view in situ]
Foster’s School

We were all very annoyed, it was a big shame.

I know that I'd have failed my secondary education had I gone to another school - the teachers (and Mr Williams was certainly one of the best) were…

[view in situ]
When chickens don’t eat enough grit

Afraid not, that'd be the rare Venezuelan Breakfast Chicken that you're thinking of.

We just have bantams, silkies and beautiful french hens.

[view in situ]

Thanks guys, I know it's a calcium deficiency, and it rarely happens because they get lots of good food, grit to eat, plenty of vegetables, and as much sunlight as our cloudy skys can offer - but…

[view in situ]

I'm innocent of egg abuse! :op

I think it got squished a bitby my mum, it's really ever so soft.

Sometimes the eggs are so soft they don't even have a shell to speak of - just a thick…

[view in situ]
December 2003
Foggy morning

Fog is very cool. When you look down into a valley like that it always reminds me of the mists you see in Rain Forests.

[view in situ]
A higher frequency of excitement please

*crushed*

Well, dimples, they're... I guess people like babies and they have dimples... but still... not really the same thing... dimples... damn.

[view in situ]

I deny the presence of knobbles in my knees! :op

http://www.1976design.com/blog/ima…

[view in situ]
Bandwidth theft and flame-bait

Oooh, now that's a great idea, Sian.
I think I might look into that when I get a mo.

Good thinking that girl!

[view in situ]

"Your "bandwidth-protection-plan" isn't really bandwidth protecting..."

Yeah, I know, but I figured it was worth it for these guys, and anyway, to link to an external image would make me guilty…

[view in situ]

"The trappings of being rich and famous with knobbly knees."

I have an aunt who will contest to the allure of my knees - when I was little she was always "Oooh, look at those lovely knees!"…

[view in situ]

I think that registration with a valid email address might stop the very casual flamer, but it's not that hard to get a hotmail or yahoo one, so I think, on balance, that that system would do more…

[view in situ]
Nice Titles revised

Sorry Greg, never seen that before. I'll be posting about a new version of Nice Titles that another chap has produced some time today, or tomorrow, so hang around to see that.

[view in situ]

Michael, (I think you're moving house or something right now) I too had image-link problems with the old version, but I think I fixed it in my version - did you try that yet?

I think I had to…

[view in situ]
Easy CSS drop shadows

Yup, it has to be fixed.
Thank you for your continued support.
I'll try and send you a 'Friends of Dunstan' badge or something.

[view in situ]

"BUT Y NOT JUST DO IT ALL IN PHOTOSHOP THEN U WONT HAVE TO CODE SHIT...LMFAO AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHH"

Why? Because, Mr Simplefix, the adding of drop shadows to images within Photoshop is hugely…

[view in situ]

"They look like yours. Although, I didn't spot this explanatory post until after I had implemented them."

Oh yes, I wasn't implying anything there!

[view in situ]

Rich, that popup idea is very cool!

It feels 'wrong' to me as well though, I feel like I want windows architecture around it. I wonder if a more prominant, darker border might solve the issues…

[view in situ]

I've thought about using a png as well and just using a '>' selector in CSS to feed a gif to IE and PNG to Moz and the rest:

// for IE
#content div.img-dec {
background: url(shadow.gif)…

[view in situ]
Be nice to sheep

No, that's calculated using a PHP script - because the moon passes through consistant phases, you only need to know when to start off the calculation process (ie. prime it with the date of a known…

[view in situ]

Are you allowed to @import something other than a .css file then?

If so, perfect and thank you!

It just never occured to that that was allowed... good thinking, sir :o)

[view in situ]

Scott - for some reason Flash never occured to me, which is daft because, as you say, it seems like the perfect thing to use here.

I guess the only problem would be that of file size... oh, and…

[view in situ]

Good point Po1: I have split the css files up and got PHP to print out a link to the correct one, so that saves some size, but I'll look in to making that print out even more specific.

However,…

[view in situ]

:oD

You too, Eduardo!

[view in situ]

Eh? I'm not calling you an idiot.

I'm saying that it's 'stupidly hard to find' - that means they have made it harder to find than they should have done.

They are stupid. Not you.

[view in situ]

It's stupidly hard to find:
http://registration.weather.com/re…

Though there are plenty of free XML weather feeds out there, you're not limited to weather.com

[view in situ]

We don't have cows, sorry :o/

[view in situ]

Excellent thinking Chris - optional sound effects ;o)

[view in situ]

Ernie - never under-estimate the power of the sheep-fanciers movement... I'm probably in their good books right now, while you'll be targeted by shepherds from all over the world for that heartless…

[view in situ]

Ah, Mr Ethan very kindly held my hand and walked me through the whole command line process.

I found I got a 5.9% reduction on the larger images using pngcrush, so for now I'll stick with my JPEGs.

[view in situ]

Well, I simply don't understand how to make a command line program (as pngcrush is) work on my desktop PC.

I know how to get a command window up in Windows, but I'm stumped beyond that, and I…

[view in situ]

I know! :oD

And I can't think of any way to get around it all... it's taken a couple of days to get it all sorted out, and it's painfully slow.

I have 86 layers in my Photoshop document, and…

[view in situ]

I was seeing if people noticed him :op

[view in situ]
A Gypsy blessing

Thanks everyone else for your kind comments, and a Happy Christmas to you all!

[view in situ]

Thanks for those Chris - after he left we were kidding that he'd scratch a sign on our gate post and come Christmas Day we'd have a flood of old guys asking for "a cop o' tea".

I shall check our…

[view in situ]

"At first, I thought that your mom was letting an old whore into your home"

My brother's wife, who's Italian, thought the same thing when I told her not to be suprised if she saw a Tramp…

[view in situ]
Calendars

I think that adding the calendar to the archive page wouldn't really be of much use - it only shows the distribution of posts for one month, and that information is much more readily obtained by…

[view in situ]

Thanks Jon - it's nice to know (or be reminded, I should say) that some people fly in and fly out again.

[view in situ]

Um, I think we might be at cross-purposes here - I want to keep the right hand sidebar as clear as possible, so people can quickly and easily choose navigation options (without having to peer…

[view in situ]

"I use the archives section instead of the calender"

Me too, Sian.

[view in situ]

Ah! I knew it wouldn't be so easy :op

[view in situ]

"Plus, the sidebar has plenty of vertical space, so I don't think that's an issue"

Ah, but I think that we've all become used to huge, long sidebars on sites - one of my biggest goals here is to…

[view in situ]

"Of course, having irrelevant titles can hurt more than anything, like an unnecessary punch to the groin"

I can't quite think how to phrase my response, but the use of the word 'unnecessary'…

[view in situ]

Funny isn't it?

As they say on Widgetopia, it's something that comes as default in most blogging templates, and when I built my own site I just put one in without really thinking if it was…

[view in situ]
Frickin’ mouth ulcers

Maybe the bloke in that comment meant tummy ulcers?

They're different...

[view in situ]

Oh, well thanks for that Sian, but actually peppers (both the hot and the 'salady' ones) are on my list of things to avoid as they're the same family as tomatoes. Ulcers abound if I eat…

[view in situ]
Who and where

Ken, that's very good!

My 'people' list is made possible because I use custom tags around each person's name, (otherwise there's nothing that identifies a person as a person) but otherwise works…

[view in situ]

Dvd: Oh yes, how very odd... I haven't a clue what's different :o/

Thanks for pointing that out though!

[view in situ]
What once was flowers and puppy dogs

And Ethan[1] just pointed out this site:

http://www.annetaintor.com/

[1] http://www.sidesh0w.com/

[view in situ]

Hey Dan - cards like that are sold everywhere here in the UK, but I notice that those three are imported from a US company:

http://www.ephemera-inc.com/

[view in situ]
Apples and pears

We could certainly give Bob Flowerdew a run for his money ;o)

"I'm afraid that this week the panel will only be taking questions on grafting garlic to other bits of garlic..."

For those who…

[view in situ]

Tom, everything seems to be in the Bible, it's like an oddly spelt version of the Encyclopedia Britannica ;o)

Thanks for the info!

[view in situ]

David: Oh yes, what a coincidence!

[view in situ]
Eggs, fresh from the hen house

Sometimes when we run out we have to get shop eggs, and the difference in colour is amazing - ours are lovely and yellow, and the shop ones are pale and 'orrible.

[view in situ]

Oh yes, that might work, you're right.

But man, I hate extra markup :o(

I think I'd rather kill IE's float.
I hate IE.. grrrrrrr.

But thank you _again_ it's something to think about :o)

[view in situ]

Yeah, that's annoying: there are a whole bunch of little bugs like that that need fixing. Thanks for reminding me :o)

[view in situ]

Well, they are already enclosed by the left-hand col, so I shouldn't need to add in another block. Plus, I can't specify a definite width because it's a fluid layout.

I think I might just use…

[view in situ]

BTW, I've noticed that in IE the images float over the right-hand column on this post, I'm trying to fix that now. Any suggestions gratefully received :o)

[view in situ]
King Blog

Dunstan: "Hundreds of thousands of blogs break the 'rules' of web design all the time"

Sian: "...telling me that I'm breaking the 'rules'?"

No Sian, and as you'll see in one of my later…

[view in situ]

Keith, you're right about the personal attack thing, maybe that explains it all. And as for the language use, I am _terrible_ at using the correct terms - when I did Sport Science at university…

[view in situ]

Keith, I agree with you that designing a blog/personal site and a corporate site are two different things, but I still think that unless you're trying to be deliberately oddball, there are certain…

[view in situ]

It's a secret ;o)

[view in situ]

"Most designers seem to forget that their site is also a website, yet since it is "personal" they can do whatever they want...yet they still want people to come and read what they have to say.…

[view in situ]
The ginger line continues

I think I'll just email a copy of this thread to kat[at]meyerweb.com ;o)

[view in situ]

No, cause she's had the baby, so she's smaller than before :o)

And I don't think there's anywhere you can run that will stop a lady tracking you down when you've made a comment like that ;o)

[view in situ]
What to get for christmas?

"Pope Innocent III Action Figure... Comes with removable fancy Pope hat."

:oD

[view in situ]
I will now count backwards from ten

I rest my case.

[view in situ]

You may mock, but it really works! For instance, I haven't read the book, only the web site, but I've already made great inroads into this mystical art.

One of the quotes in my post says: "I was…

[view in situ]

Chris, that had me laughing out loud :oD

[view in situ]

The site was down earlier today, if that's the case again then here's Google's cached version:

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cac…

[view in situ]
Googley woogley

I've just realised: I'm now going to be ranked for these rediculous phrases in Google :op

My favourite so far is from Tara [1]:

"tara shut up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…

[view in situ]
Shhh, it’s a secret

I know Filip, I just saw how many of the things were coming in and it just made me laugh to think someone might be saying "Hmm, damn, 404, I really wanted to see that errror page".

But that's a…

[view in situ]

I have to say: I hope that the 73 people who have so far submitted a 404 error report to me from this post are just testing the system, and aren't thinking "Hmm, I clicked on that link to his 404…

[view in situ]
XML feed moving to new location

It's a cool layout because it provides access to lots of info in those sidebars without taking up tons of vertical space (that's been my new focus recently).

That's one of the weaknesses of this…

[view in situ]

Sure thing Richard, I'll add it to the list :o)

I'm also thinking of doing an RSS feed for each post's comments as well - hardly any extra work and someone might find it useful.

Hmmm, bugger,…

[view in situ]
God is in the typos

Nice one Sans, don't get me started thinking about that!

if ($all == 'god')
{
be nice: help an old lady across the street
}

else if ($all == 'satan')
{
be nasty: poke an old lady…

[view in situ]

Ruben, these last few days have been a bit fraught, but it's come perfectly together in that last hour or so and I'm smiling again. After your comment I feel even better - you can drop by anytime…

[view in situ]
November 2003
Shhh, it’s a secret

There's no practical reason Zach, you'd be doing it for the same reason people put hidden extras in computer games - just for the doing, and for the pleasure people would get in finding it, in…

[view in situ]
Googley woogley

You're right Michael, that cat does rock! :op

I got it from this site (pretty funny):
http://www.pineapple-girl.com/mele…

Who in turn got it from this site (very…

[view in situ]
Increase my what?

Well I'm glad it's not just me she thinks is inadequate ;o)

But I do find it annoying when spam arrives from my own email address (or so it seems).

[view in situ]
Javascript image captions

Ah, nice idea Dee, putting the caption _on top_ of the image. I hadn't thought of that.

[view in situ]
XML feed moving to new location

You got it, Stuart. So, it's gotta move, because the explanation page is exactly what you'd expect to find at that URL. If I leave the feed where it is it effectively cuts off any expansion down…

[view in situ]

I know, but cools URLS are also navigatable (is that a real word?) buy chopping bits off them.

So if someone's at:
~blog/syndicate/rss/2.0/

And they chop a bit…

[view in situ]
Come on England

Ah ha!!!!! Oh my goodness, what a final, I am utterly exhausted. My parents both have headaches, and I was shaking so badly by the end I could barely use the phone to call my brother in…

[view in situ]
Nice Titles revised

Hey Stuart - not a problem, it's great to have the script to start with, I'd never be able to write it from scratch :o)

The opacity thing isn't hard though - just set one opacity for the div,…

[view in situ]

IE6 duly blocked... shame, but there we are.

[view in situ]

Yes, it turns out IE is offsetting the popups by the height of my weather header. It only happens in the main body of the page, not on the navigation menu.

It only seems to do this on my site,…

[view in situ]

Hey, that's odd - you're right J, it does it to me as well on IE6 - but it works fine on my off-line test pages :o/

There must be something odd in my site making it freak out. (It's fine in Moz.)

[view in situ]

If anyone's wondering, I removed the transparent PNG from the CSS and replaced it with a solid background colour. I then applied Moz-only opacity to it.

Why? Well, the image was taking too long…

[view in situ]
A visual guide to navigating blog comments

Brahm: "There's nothing inherent about the colors that make me think 'that's the parent' or 'that's a child'"

You biggest clue is, of course, that child comments will always appear below the…

[view in situ]

Hi Brahm - thanks for your comments - what you suggest is already in place, if you look at the foot of each comment it gives you links to all the other related comments (its parents and children) -…

[view in situ]

Ah, I think what Roberto is saying is that I could respond to two 'unrelated' comments in one post, marking them both as parents.

So I could comment on Tom and Homestarr, and also on your post,…

[view in situ]

Oh yes, that's very true. You know, you'd think I would have spotted that, having written the damn thing :op

[view in situ]

Thanks Tom, I think it is a JS issue, and hopefully something the wonderful lads and lasses of thelist can help me with.

"...but this site roxxors."

For some reason that reminds me of…

[view in situ]

Ha! So that's my great idea down the pan, eh?
Well, that didn't last long :oD

Um, why, why, because, a) I already had this system in place I just thought it needed improving, b) I thought it…

[view in situ]
Easy CSS drop shadows

Hey Richard... hmm, well, OK, but remember that images have to be enclosed by a block-level element, and span isn't block-level, it's inline. Watch out for that if you're going to validate your…

[view in situ]

It's on the 'Contact' page! :op

http://www.1976design.com/blog/con…

[view in situ]

Steven - I know it works fine in IE6, but that IE5x messes up because it doesn't get the box model right.

Email me the IE version you're using and a screen shot and I'll see if I can help you out.

[view in situ]

Hey Markku,

The only problem (as Mash points out) is that browsers that get the box model wrong have an 8px gap between the image and the shadow on the right hand side.

Doesn't seem to be…

[view in situ]

Err, I _think_ what you're trying to say is that I should have included a CSS hack for IE5's box-model problems.

Yes, I should have.

Bad Dunstan.

[view in situ]

Mini-d writes: "Why you don't set background-img to an image directly?"

Two reasons:

[1] Images have to be contained by a block-level element anyway, so I already have to wrap them in a 'p'…

[view in situ]

Ah, with some help from CCS-d (Susanne Jaeger http://www.sujag.de/) I have it working.

I'm going to alter the code listed above so it works in all three browsers now.

Susanne writes:

I…

[view in situ]

It's an odd problem actually Tony, I'm sure it's Moz that gets this wrong, but I've gone with the code I posted above because at least this way Opera and IE display something that still looks…

[view in situ]
Slightly scary

Do you mean you:

[1] Like hurting yourself? or,
[2] Are a carbuncle, on Chairman Mao? or,
[3] Discriminate against Mice?

[view in situ]
Neutralising spam

That's OK Tara, any kind of info is great, and could save me wasting hours of my time! :o)

[view in situ]

Paul - that's a great idea - or maybe open it up a little bit and say that comments on anything past 2 weeks old must come through you first, before going live. That'd cut down the odds of crap…

[view in situ]

Ben - oh yes, I'd forgotten about simon's method, that has exactly the effect I was trying to achieve, of neutralising spam rather than just relying on stopping it at the point of submission. (I…

[view in situ]

Well turning them into links would be the work of a moment - simply altering an admin setting. I use a little regex to change the URLs into links as they come out of the DB, so it would be a case…

[view in situ]

(Hey Matt - thanks for the comments as always, it's all very well having these thoughts in isolation, but it's great to get some feedback and find out if they're rubbish or not :o)

I don't know…

[view in situ]

An additional thought - maybe in the time you take to review a comment, while the links are still rendered as plain text, you could use Javascript to turn them into clickable links.

That would…

[view in situ]
Email revisited: Tucson, Arizona (22nd April, 2002)

Kevin, how incredibly kind of you, but actually I'm alright :o)

I certainly wasn't OK when I wrote that email in 2002, but I'm 99% over that now.

As for my songs, well, damn, I must just be…

[view in situ]
Site updates

Matt, I've made that change for you, so just grab the file from here:

http://www.1976design.com/blog/ima…

[view in situ]

Hey Matt, you need to use CSS, here are my rules, just add a 'text-align: right;' into it:

blockquote div.source {
color: #555;
font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial,…

[view in situ]

Sure thing Jay, that'd be great :o)

I'm sure Simon is in there doing his thing as well - he can probably offer a lot more than me, but I'm happy to contribute what I can.

Bung me some emails…

[view in situ]

Thanks Jay, I have seen your site and your blacklist.txt file, but thought I'd get things working with a few of the other independent bloggers before I figured out how to parse your file…

[view in situ]

Anders wrote: "The right hand 'Navigation' menu doesn't work in Firebird 0.6.1 on linux. Clicking any of the links ('Home','Archive', etc) has no effect."

Ah, I wonder if that's because I have…

[view in situ]

Matt wrote: "Of course your comment notification thing might be an incentive to spammers."

Yes, that is my only worry, but then any kind of notification system is going to suffer from this. I…

[view in situ]

Damn, sorry Keith - as daft as it sounds my wireless keyboard has been playing silly buggers for the last couple of days and I'm finding the oddest things appearing on screen.

But what's…

[view in situ]
Opera and its Small-Screen Rendering technology

Thanks for the detail Paul, I was blinded by marketing :op

[view in situ]

It's good isn't it?

I notice it tries to compress the images down to fit the screen width, which doesn't really work (not for the images I looked at on my site anyway). But maybe you can get…

[view in situ]
Musica

Yeah, I'm slowly getting rid of some of their stuff from my playlist, but on the whole they're pretty good. I like One Note Song :o)

As for Joss Stone's site, I think you can hear her music on…

[view in situ]
Resurfacing the yard

I'm taking the pics using a Canon EOS D10 and then putting them together using Photoshop 7. That file came to about 600MB as I wanted to use the original images in case I ever printed it…

[view in situ]

Thanks Markku!

You can see another of this kind of photo here:
http://www.1976design.com/photogra…

It's our vegetable garden :o)

[view in situ]
Allergy testing

I don't think many people lead a more stress-free life than me — I'm very lucky and have it pretty easy down here :o)

But you're right, stress doesn't help at all. The only two times I've been…

[view in situ]

No, they didn't say that, but I guess it would make sense. If you don't get lots of sleep then your body runs down, and as I don't get much sleep, a bit more would probably help out.

And as for…

[view in situ]
Down from the hills

Well, it was a wooden decking area, with a sloped wooden roof, held up by wooden poles, and a just-above-waist-high wooden railing around the edge.

Really very 'veranda'.

Plus, it was a pub…

[view in situ]
October 2003
Frickin’ mouth ulcers

Sauerkraut? Really?

That has vinegar in though doesn't it?
Oh, no, I see you can use salt, or vinegar, or wine:
http://www.straussherbco.com/sauer…

So, really it's just old, salty…

[view in situ]
The perils awaiting a homemade pizza

Thanks for the idea Matt, I've just done that.

[view in situ]
A higher frequency of excitement please

I'm informed by Sabrina that it's:

"Penises, or, amusingly penes. Rhymes with weenies."

[view in situ]

Sabrina, you'll probably be shot by the bloggers webring for revealing that hidden truth.

I think I'm going to have to start making things up... writing what I think just doesn't work for…

[view in situ]
Multi-functional, all-in-one everything

Hey Angela,

The American/British Dictionary [1] says:

barmy sl adj:
soft in the head, crazy, stupid, “yer barmy git“.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [2]…

[view in situ]
Woof woof

As Janeane Garofalo [1] says in The Truth About Cats And Dogs [2], “It’s okay to love your pets, just don’t looooove your pets.”

[1]…

[view in situ]
The maze

They’re not always the best — the first guy finished fixing my laptop, closed up the case and then found he had a screw left over!

It look us ages to find where it was meant to go.

[view in situ]