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| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 | | 11:39 am |
Oops!
It turns out, there ARE still people using Firefox 2! For example my lovely friend D, who bought a secondhand Mac last year and is, not unreasonably, using the browser that was already on it, because it works. So, hmm, I will need to investigate whether the !important command will override moz-inline-box in Firefox 3 so that I can use the nice centred buttons without manking up either FF2 or FF3... | | Friday, July 17th, 2009 | | 2:05 pm |
You like potato?
The first part of the potato harvest is in! We shall feast on sauteed potatoes tonight! Pot 1 of 4 yielded perhaps 4 lbs of nice-looking potatoes. Not bad given they came from one sprouter that Al rescued from the bin! I hung my towel out in the garden to dry. I'm now watching the gentle rain fall upon it... | | Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | | 4:59 pm |
Misc
My brain hurts like anything - I'm creating a whole slew of pages for a web project Al and I are doing, and they all need to interlock and I'm using heaps of php. It's working, but it's hard! My mum has swine flu. But she is apparently getting better. Al has bought some very cute chinese devices. He had to tell me what they were, at which point I felt slightly stupid! I should post pics but I have brain-nurty php to write, sorry...it's the combination of css, html and php that's so tricky! | | 4:32 pm |
silly question, I am sure
But in the Harry Potter movie yesterday, there was one plot hole that struck me particularly strongly, and I don't remember whether it is explained better in the book.
( Possible spoilers )
Otherwise a fun film, very pretty. For me, it has somewhat the same flaws as the books in that the characters don't really come to life for me, apart from Snape who steals the show as usual. But Ron under the influence of a love potion was hilarious, and the love stories do quite a bit to make up for the lack of a real plot arc in this film which, again like the book, can fairly be described as "the end - part I". Overall kind of dull, but that's what I thought of the first film (which I couldn't be arsed to finish watching). So if you liked any of the previous films, and/or are a fan of the books, I think you will love it! | | Monday, July 13th, 2009 | | 6:31 pm |
oh dang it
I thought I'd just install phpBB on the netbook and have a go with it. But I FAIL at the first hurdle. I cannot work out how to create a user for the database! I can use phpmyadmin to create a database, but there seems no way to create a user for the database! I am reading endless tutorials but I don't understand a word of it! I can't remember exactly how it worked when installing Joomla, I must have done something to get a user on the localhost, but blowed if I can remember how it worked, or whether the Joomla installer took care of it...which makes no sense...argh! Phew! finally found a reference. Basically on the localhost, it's just root, "", because security isn't an issue. And on a remote server, there is a control panel where you can create a user for just that database. | | Friday, July 10th, 2009 | | 11:34 am |
Torchwood musing
So, any guesses as to how many series of Torchwood they will make? 'Cause there is a bit of an end-stop on the show, isn't there? Unless they make some dramatic changes to Captain Jack's circumstances...to put it bluntly, when they can't hide the actor's aging any longer... | | Thursday, July 9th, 2009 | | 10:45 am |
Adding injury to insult
I can kind of cope with having to coax Thomas to eat. But I am getting pretty fed up with his latest habit of scratching my hand when he's definitely had enough. Meh. | | 9:37 am |
| | 8:56 am |
I'm continuing to introduce the local crowd to Mah Jong: I think yesterday was pretty successful in that much macaroni cheese was eaten, and rather to my surprise we got through a full East wind round. Admittedly the dealer lost every time so it was only four hands, but the last 2 we were playing pretty much the full game with compulsory yaku. I'm also working on a set of crib sheets with pictures of all the yaku, which will help us all out. Today, I must crack on with the latest UI design and then I want to start investigating phpBB bulletin boards. Looking at a site some friends use, it seems much more configurable and friendlier than some of the alternatives and I'd like to find out how well it integrates with Joomla, and how easy it is to customise the appearance. It's currently sunny so Thomas is out in the garden. Sensible cat! | | Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 6:34 pm |
Officially Impressed
I've been playing with the Agora forum for Joomla, and came up against various issues including the usual IE6 layout foulup. I posted on the forums and the response has been amazing. Actual developers have taken the time to query me about the nature of the problems, and one of the founders has just suggested what appears to be a perfect fix for the IE6 issue. What lovely and talented people. Once they get it finished, the final product will be fab. I will need to restyle it / retext it quite extensively because it is pretty cryptic if you aren't used to forums - and my users will mostly never have used a forum in their lives. For example, words like index, topic etc. won't mean a thing to them, and they need a big obvious button saying "New Message" instead of a little one saying "New Topic". But this is all stuff I should be able to do. And the functionality is all really good (user maps, profiles, groups etc). | | 1:44 pm |
Martin Gardner query
My Dad has been given a strangely-cut piece of paper folded into a square, which physically simulates a method for remembering Maxwell's Relations (something to do with thermodynamics, don't worry about it). The problem is that he has posted it to me, and I have unfolded it in a curious fashion, but now cannot refold it - and neither of us knows how to use it anyway. The kindly scientist who gave it to him said that it was based on an article in "Fun with Maths" by Martin Gardner. Now, while it has a very Martin Gardnerish sort of look (anybody here remember hexaflexagons?) I cannot find any references to a book of that name by Gardner. The piece of paper is shaped like a square with the corners cut out. It is then folded into a square with four quadrants. You can refold it in various ways to show other panels in the quadrants. No, that probably doesn't make any sense if you haven't seen it. Anyway, does this ring any bells with anybody? I'd dearly love to find the original reference, and help Dad refold and use it! | | 10:14 am |
Rain rain don't go away...
We finally got the rain last night. It was lovely. Not thunderstorms and torrents, but nice steady rain. I went out at about 3am to see if I could work out what was making the annoying ping ping ping noise, and was a bit surprised to see no cat. I know cats are good at taking care of themselves but I was a little worried because he's so old and pathetic. So I wandered up and down the garden for a bit in nothing but sandals and a waterproof slung over my shoulders - so lovely after the heat wave! Eventually I saw a black and white shape in the hedge and realised Thomas was (quite sensibly) lurking under a bush. I tried to coax him out to grab him and drag him into the house, but while he kept mewing at high speed, he wouldn't come out. So I gave up and went back in, then turned around and there he was :) Yesterday we had a smallish games evening where we sat in the garden and played mah jong. It was slightly marred by Thomas chasing a fledgeling blackbird around, to the great distress of the parents, but Gwen and Al did heroic work distracting Thomas and I was very happy this morning to see it taking trial flights around the garden accompanied by a watchful adult. Thomas is in and I've temporarily shut the catflap to give it a freer run. Nothing I can do about the younger and livelier cats of the neighbourhood, but maybe it will survive...ah! There it goes again. Flying low at just the height to attract a cat...and not too great about gaining altitude...sorry Thomas, you're staying inside this morning. It's still grey and damp so hopefully Thomas won't mind too much. I've definitely got the mah jong bug! I would dearly love another game this weekend but I'm not sure we can tempt two volunteers around...any 2 people want to come play on Saturday evening? More welcome as usual but only 4 can play at once so we'd have to take turns. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 8:15 pm |
Gahhhh!!!!
The fiddly css layout that took me 3 days to develop, which lets me have a Joomla site with a sidebar of width 16ems and a fluid content, may work perfectly on the local server but FAILS on t'internet. Bah! I've no idea what's wrong! So I've deleted the entire site (well, moved it to a backup folder) and am now copying the ENTIRE Joomla folder across from the localhost. All 4,853 files of it. Should take about 3 hours - fireftp is not fast. Then I'll squirt the database over again. If it still doesn't work, I've absolutely no idea what to do. In better news, Al has secretly bought me an extremely swish mah jong set, in a beautiful wooden box with drawers! Now, how soon can I get some people round here to learn Japanese mah jong??? It must be played! Edit: phew! The epic copying took about 5 hours but seems to have worked. I'm now playing with the Agora forums and have discovered a bit of UI in the component which has to rate as one of the worst I've ever seen! Shocking! There is a line of what appear to be tabs/menu items, but one of them toggles the view. As a result, I think members will entirely lose the main forum view. I want to use Agora forums because they provide the functionality that the client wants (e.g. user profiles, Google maps), but there are definite usability issues. | | 9:09 am |
Miscellaneous
I've had the traditional Julian May experience on re-reading the Saga of the Exiles. I read volume 1 and was impressed and delighted all afresh. I ploughed through volume 2 happily enough. Volume 3 I skim read in a slightly bored fashion, gradually losing interest as one key character after another was either bumped off, or transformed into a small red jewel and left to meditate for 6 million years. Volume 4 went back on the shelf unread. So now I'm reading Olivier Butler's "Xenogenesis" series. Enjoyable, but I am slightly depressed by her view of humanity. I know people are inclined to be xenophobic and violent, but I truly believe that there would be a greater variety of responses to an oo-weird alien invasion, and that a smaller proportion of the population would be quite so trigger-happy. Still, I'm very grateful to Chris (winolj) for lending them to me. Last week I had a very good day in London with my bro and his family. The Tower of London is much more interesting than I remember it from a visit some 30+ years ago. The actors/interpreters added a lot - a skit about Henry's court life with lots of ranting, hair pulling and sword fighting, plus a long session of firing seige engines where my bro was part of the team that sent a water-filled balloon flying across the moat. Saturday was spent with Wychwood, doing a little display at the Northmoor Trust (they manage Wittenham Clumps near Dorchester on Thames in Oxfordshire, one of my all time favourite sites). We did Saxon and Viking food in an attempt to lure people out of the Children's Food Festival and into the visitor centre. I did not see "Ray" (you know, Raymond...) but WW did manage to get themselves on the radio and into the Oxford Mail. Freya made cheese, we all made stew and flatbreads were also made and nommed. Hot though. I wore my spangly new nettle dress with the linen tablet weaving, partly because J&J hadn't seen it and they got the fabric for me. But it's hotter than linen, and my wool smokkr didn't help. But we survived, and then went into Oxford to find that somebody had opened a tap above the city. Sploshed through the rain and ate Noodle Bar tasty food, then quick drink in the pub before home to collapse. Sunday we went to visit <lj user="purpleperil">. Al did lots of hard work dismembering a sofa and mowing the lawn, while Peril and I moved a few bits of furniture and then played with the KITTEHS!!!! Tabitha and Nicodemus are gloriously kitteny, very pretty, alert, playful and friendly. Also very healthy, bright eyed and bushy tailed! Nicodemus has not quite got the hang of windows though - there were several loud thumps as he charged into the (closed) french doors! I got him to sit on my knee at one point, but he promptly fell off, leaving a tidy set of four claw marks! Then Peril bought us chineefoo, bringing a delightful afternoon to an unexpected and delicious close. Now it's time for me to get back to my old friend, Joomla. I *think* that at the close of play yesterday, I had pretty much got my template working. The wrinkle is that I want a fluid layout with resizable text, but for the menu/tools sidebar to have a width set in ems so that when you resize the text, the sidebar adjusts its size to fit the layout. Normally this would be a simple matter of a few floats, but in Joomla, the main content is squirted in as a bewildering variety of table (and css) layouts: each type of content (e.g. article, contacts page, links, newsfeed, blog, forum) is not unsurprisingly laid out differently. And there is a problem that IE6 in particular (but all browsers to some extent) tend to push the content down below the sidebar instead of next to it. The obvious floats layout failed - I think it might work if you had fixed width or fixed proportions for your page elements, but that isn't what I want. Brutally doing them as two table columns ought to have worked, but failed for the forum: it wouldn't expand to fill the area, and bits of it disappeared. Finally I got something working by dismembering the negative margins three-column layout from A List Apart, throwing one of the columns away and swapping the other from right to left. No really, that was the only thing that worked. And one of the pages STILL goes wrong in IE6, so I have written a loathsome hack to call in a special stylesheet for just that page. It's loathsome because if I change the name of the page, I'll have to change the php. What I would like is to detect the type of content, which I am sure is possible but I can't find out how and I'm out of time to fiddle with this. Anyway, I am a bit nervous about looking at it this morning in case it's broken itself! Hey ho, off we go... | | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 11:51 am |
| | Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | | 10:04 am |
Righty-ho...it looks like tables and floats don't play very nicely with each other. So until I'm ready to embark on a completely table-less Joomla layout, I need to use tables to arrange the main content and the panels to the left and right of it. It's only a problem because I want a semi-fluid layout. If the user widens the window, I want the extra space to be used for content only, not to widen the submenu which is of known width. I kind of wish that some of the tutorials, somewhere, had said that if you want to do anything quirky (apparently this is non-standard, despite being obviously desirable!) then just use tables for the content area, and don't waste your time trying to tickle up a css solution. It makes sod all difference to compliance, because the content and modules are all styled with tables by the Joomla core. An extra table wrapped around it is negligible. Yes there is a way to override the core content, but it's a big job for another day - right now I just want to make the site work! I still like Joomla. It seems basically sensible. But there is an awful lot to learn! n.b. I have come up against my first actual Joomla bug, with split menus (apparently it will be fixed soon). Luckily, while it makes the html a bit messy, it doens't seem to cause any visible problems so far. | | Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | | 8:25 pm |
Oh bother!
After much fussing around and difficulty, I managed to install DK2 on the Netbook. But I can't play it, because it won't accept connection to a DVD drive across the network. And wanky copy protection means you have to have the disk in the drive to play. Of course the Netbook hasn't got a DVD drive, and we don't have an external drive that I could plug in - there are only the internal drives on the other machines. Which I can't take to Cambridge!!! Dang! Thwarted! I don't even know if the game would run properly on XP home, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to find out :( | | Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | | 10:56 am |
The IE fun continues
I've made a Joomla template, hurrah! It loads without error etc. But because the content is inserted within its own divs, the layout is manked up and I need to find fixes for multiple IE bugs that have been introduced. Got the first few sorted out (haslayout and float bugs, all of familiar sorts but with novel manifestations) but now find that when I resize the text in IE (any version), the floated text overlaps the non-floated to its left: the div size is not being recalculated. So that means I have to embark on a new quest, to find out what's likely to cause this and how I might fix it. It's all very fiddly! | | Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 | | 5:42 pm |
OK, I think this is a new IE bug to me! Two of my divs are invisible in IE6, unless you either resize the window, OR put another window in front of it and then remove it! The content appears only where the other window was! Edit: of course, it WAS a haslayout bug after all, despite manifesting differently. Took me a while to spot because there was something in the code making the page still refer to the wrong stylesheet! Phew. IE6, after all this time, it still gets me! | | 1:04 pm |
Lack of curiousity can be costly
Dearie me, apparently lots of people are being scammed into giving out credit card details. Somebody phones you up and says they are from BT and have cut your line off because your direct debit has been cancelled. They then "prove" they are from BT by telling you to put your phone down and observe that you then cannot make a call - clearly your line HAS been cut off. a) it's a very long time since I learned that if somebody calls you, they can tie up your line if they forget to hang up. This is really basic telephone usage stuff. b) since when did BT (or any other service provider) cut off a service without written warning? c) apparently if you do give them your card details, they then say it's been refused and can you give them a different one...so they can keep on getting more card details out of somebody who doesn't smell a rat. Sigh. What part of "don't give your credit card details to somebody who phones you up" has escaped them? |
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