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Author: Richy B.

Follow me on Mastodon at @rbairwell@mastodon.org.uk or just the posts on this blog by following @richyb@blog.rac.me.uk .

News: Terrifica for Women

July 29, 2003
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TerrificaOk, I know this article in ABC News is a bit old (it’s dated November the 5th, but no year), but I’ve only just came across it and couldn’t resist having a little giggle at it.

All, I’m saying is if a bloke said:

… because women are weak. They are easily manipulated, and they need to be protected from themselves..

then that bloke would be lynched! But for a red leotard wearing, “defender of women”, it’s ok…

Strange how it may seem, I’m sure there are women that go out at night “looking for a good time” (just like some blokes do) and probably won’t appreciate it if somebody like this interfered in their having fun – or is that just me manipulating the way I view women that have tops down to ‘there’, skirts up to ‘there’ and ‘attach’ themselves to the first bloke they see?

Actually, I believe both genders can be manipulated equally and comments like Terrifica’s can only really help men think “Women are stupid and can’t think for themselves”.

Discuss.

😀

Blogging: 1,000 Comments!

July 28, 2003
2 Comments

Woo! I’ve just hit the 1,000th comment entry with:

July 28, 2003 12:37 AM: on Game: Grid Lock by Canguy

i’ve been scratching my head so long over level 40 i’m bleeding
Canguy

Ok, it’s not the most inspiring comment on the most up to date post – but it’s still the 1,000th comment (baring duplicates and spam: both of which I should have eradicated by now).

If all goes well, the following piece of code snippet:

<ol>
<MTComments firstn=”1000″ sort_order=”ascend”>
<li><span class=”comments-post”><$MTCommentDate$>: on <MTCommentEntry><a href=”<$MTEntryLink$>
“><$MTEntryTitle$></a></MTCommentEntry> by <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1” show_email=”0″$></span><br /><$MTCommentBody$></li>
</MTComments>
</ol>

should mean the full entry of this post should have all 1,000 comments listed. I was hoping to be able to have cut’n’pasted the list in: but, again, I’ve hit the “maximum post size” of MovableType. Drat…

Update: Nope, it didn’t work. It seems you can’t use the template tags in an entry. Oh well, you’ll just have to look through the blog to find the comments!

Many thanks everybody for all the comments and trackbacks – and keep them coming! They make blogging worth the while!

Work: Site Redesign Finished

July 27, 2003
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As the orders on the hosting side of work have been down the last fortnight, we’ve decided to take action and revamp one of our two web site hosting sites.

Well, I’ve ended up revamping it as the version done by a co-worker wasn’t quite -erm- I’m not sure, it just didn’t have the “umpf” factor. Anyway, after 10 hours of work I’ve completed it. It’s 95% CSS, XHTML Transitional and it looks quite good (in Internet Explorer and Mozilla!). It was a bit difficult getting things just right due to the various bugs in Internet Explorer: whenever you design a website, remember the following:

Put the DOCTYPE in the page FIRST! If you don’t have one in, Internet Explorer runs in “buggy” mode, put one in and it then changes the rendering model to be closer to the standard as used by Mozilla – but it’ll change how the site looks.

Be careful of “Float”. I’ve used the CSS float: setting to get some of the page positioning just right, but depending if it’s used or not effects how the elements render on the page (adding it double the size of some of the menus I was using it one). Totally unexpected, and probably another Internet Explorer bug.

Page sizes differ in browsers. I’ve set the width of the “main section” of the page to 100%: in Internet Explorer, it looks good and it fills 100% of the browser window (as expected). In Mozilla, however, it seems to fill 101% so you’ve got a very very tiny horizontal scroll area.

DIV and SPAN are different. Yeah, yeah – use “DIV” for divisions of the page (it automatically inserts linebreaks) and use SPAN for “inline” sections. However, the differences go deeper then that – the “width” setting doesn’t seem to work correctly on Spans and there are a few other differences.

Oh well, it’s all done now and I’ve sent the URL of the test site to my co-workers for their comments: fingers crossed!

Guess That Movie: LXIV: Joe’s Apartment

July 26, 2003
4 Comments

Guess That Movie 64It’s time for Guess That Movie round 64! Woo!!!!

For those who are new here, basically Guess That Movie (GTM) is a little competition where you have “simply” just got to recognise which movie the screen shot on the left has been taken from. I say “simply” as sometimes, it’s not quite obvious which movie it is (yes, the screenshot has been cropped and resized – but I’ve done nothing else to it).

Why bother guessing? Well, there are prizes to be won! Yep – prizes for a “free to enter competition” (well, a get a little kick back from the Google Adsense adverts at the top of each page which is just covering the prize fund: otherwise it comes out of my back pocket). What’s the prizes? At the moment, they are Amazon gift vouchers (for your local Amazon store in your local currency), but I’m open to suggestions.

What’s the value of the FREE to win Amazon gift vouchers? Well, it just depends on how quickly and accurately the image is guessed. As soon as I post each image, it’s worth 100 points and each 100points=£1 (roughly US$1.62 or 1.40EUR). However, each wrong guess brings the value down by 5 points and the value decreases over time. After 12 hours, it’s worth 10 points less – 12 hours after that and another 10 points are knocked off, and then 10 points for every 24 hours after that. Oh – and you can only claim a prize once you’ve collected 500 points.

Go on – have a go and Guess That Movie!

A: Joe’s Apartment. Film correctly recognised by Quida

TV: Cameron Won BB 2003

July 25, 2003
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Cameron from Big BrotherWell, as expected and as you probably already know, Cameron Stout from the Orkneys (that’s oop in Scoutland) has managed to win £70,000 from the 2003 Channel 4 Big Brother UK TV show (Big Brother 4). Despite initially coming over as a bit boring in the early weeks (a 32 year old, virtually teetotal virgin Christian fisherman who took the Bible into the house to read – not someone you would think could provide good entertainment for 64 days), he’s really been enjoyable to watch and I wish him ever success in the future (PS: if you’re reading this Cameron, all donations are gratefully received).

I haven’t been “addicted” to the show, but I’ve tried to watch it every other night or so (even though my GESF keeps winding me up by saying I sound like the delectable Steph – I’m not from r-ddy Berminghumm).

Now the question is: Will Cameron and Steph Coldicutt (nee Smith) “get it together” (if Davina has anything to do with it they will)? How about Scott Turner and Nush (personally, I think this is unlikely) and will “Songs Of Praise” still be interested in Cameron even after the “Lisa’s Windpipe” comment?

Who knows? You decide 😉 (and I cannot do even a reasonable impression of Marcus Bentley – the narrator of BB 🙁 ).

To think, when Big Brother 2002 came to an end (with Kate Lawler winning), I was just meeting my GESF for the very first time….