Blogger Entries: June 2003 Archives

Just to be Official about

|

Just to be Official about it, my web-presence has moved to this site: www.fallingbeam.org or if you want a direct link to my new blog, it can be found here: blog.fallingbeam.org. If you're wondering why, or you have any questions, you can direct them to my email link on my main page, or just post in my new forums here: forum.fallingbeam.org.

Need to put in pages

|

Need to put in pages for the parables of Subtitles and the Falling Beam.

I've spent most of the

|

I've spent most of the day figuring out how to use Movable Type, so that I don't have to rely on blogger anymore for my blogging needs. It'd be nice if I could save the entries here to the new blog, but I don't think I can be bothered. I'll probably just load all the entries into one page and then save that page for archiving. My new blog address should be active soon enough here. It's basically a subdomain of what will now be my permanent site presence, which is www.fallingbeam.org. It looks pretty scruffy, but hopefully by the end of the week I'll know that bit more about CSS.

I'm a bit cheesed off

|

I'm a bit cheesed off at the fact that the "My Pictures" button on my keyboard (which I actually use to open Word) is being a bit flaky. I could return the keyboard and get a new one, but that would mean I would be sans keyboard for god knows how long. Ah well, this keyboard can go back to singapore then :D. I still wish I had managed to get the older kind of Natural keyboard, which I probably will, just out of pique, when I go back to the US. I have to step out and get some food now, since I've been too lazy to order from Tesco, and there is absolutely no food left in the house. Shall be back in time to watch the MTV movie awards on UK TV. Hoorah.

I've moved my site, not

|

I've moved my site, not that it's particularly finished, to www.breezeland.com who seemed to have the best free hosting I could find. They offer ftp access, which is really what I was looking for, and the responsiveness is pretty nice. The url on the left has changed to reflect this, and so have the redirected urls below. I'm still contemplating what content I could use for my opera-fanboy site, but I'll probably need a nice bunch of pictures of me surrounded by opera things (which I don't have), though I'm pretty sure I'll put up screenshots of my opera setup, and an idiosyncratic guide to the functions that I use the most. Maybe a tip of the day kind of thing. Maybe a little feature as well on Microsoft input hardware, which I keep going on about.

I suppose the reason why peishan would be less than happy with all this stuff that I've been writing about is because it's not the me that used to do English. Now that's it's over, I find myself happier at the fact that my work does not bleed into every single part of my mental existence - I'm not thinking about aesthetics, politics and marxism in everything I see around me, and I'm not trying to make meaning out of whatever I concieve around me. It's nice. I get to think about the world around me as it is, as just things. I quite revel in the fact that all I'm thinking about really is Vantec Heatsinks, whether the new 800MHZ FSB on the new Intel chips means that the Athlon XP is no longer that budget chip of choice, why my wireless mouse seems less than responsive at times. I've not become braindead, I've just not got to expend that kind of energy and be that engaged with thinking about things all the time. It's nice to be able live life in banality, at least for a while. I can concentrate on things that make me happy and things that I can do. It make me feel useful. So there.

Hmm... found a link on

|

Hmm... found a link on how to spam-proof your site, basically how to display an e-mail address on your site without spammers sucessfully scanning for it. I'll try it for a while and see if it works - and use my york address :D. Here it is.

I've actually gotten a number

|

I've actually gotten a number of redirect URL's now from www.cjb.net. Convenient, and happily, free. The would be www.louiskhor.cjb.net www.fallingbeam.cjb.net and www.operafanboy.cjb.net, all of which work with or without the www in front. Unfortunately, they all seem to cause scrolling problems in IE (not in Opera or Mozilla though) and you end up stuck in that frame...

Rather impressed by a pretty

|

Rather impressed by a pretty good (not to mention reasonably funny) article in the Inq today, it's about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and an automated vacuum cleaner. You can find it here.

So far this place seems

|

So far this place seems to have the plan that best suits my needs, I need to check a number of things, but they come highly recommended from here. And they have cheap domain registration. It's tempting. I'll sleep on it and see how. Have to wonder about domain name transfer as well in case I ever grow beyond what they offer (highly unlikely of course).

I'm thinking of purchasing a

|

I'm thinking of purchasing a domain name. the best that I've thought of so far is fallingbeam.org - a reference to something that stuck in my head from Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Fallingbeam.com obviously seems to already be taken, and to be honest I'm not even really sure how domain names work, and whether it'll be able to link to a non-paid hosting site. I should probably just take the plunge, considering how much cash I haemorrage anyway, but for the moment, while I'm checking things out, I suppose free is a good way to go. I suppose quite a few concerns are addressed here, along with pretty good suggestions, but we'll see. If I went with this, Movable type would become more of a way to go... I could even host a forum with phpbb, but the question would then be: for fuck?

Peishan's been rather naughty in

|

Peishan's been rather naughty in suggesting that this blog has become rather laden with computer jargon. One word for Peishan. Neh.

But well, just one small mention then of my daily pet peeve: People who use coloured backgrounds and text in IM clients, esp ICQ. You know who you are, god damn would you please come to understand that text is meant to be read, not squinted at?

Just found a fantastic site

|

Just found a fantastic site for getting music videos online (other than Zone, which is still premier shit). You have to register for the forum (much like MP3WMA before) but they have links in the forum to tonnes of sites. Once you've registered here, you can view this link, with just a *few* sites to start you off. I think my computer's suddenly so non-responsive because of the extreme downloading now going on.... Might actually have to reinstall flashget...

Okay, think I should find

|

Okay, think I should find out more about styles before cutting an pasting stuff wholesale. Made my site look not too bad, but sort of glaringly badly formatted. Barg.

Hmm. Can't seem to get

|

Hmm. Can't seem to get my archive working as I want it. Bugger. Small changes to the template, so that the layout will be more similar to my site, which I'll probably go and edit now.

Hoorah, now I have a

|

Hoorah, now I have a link to my new/inconstruction site to my left, cunningly labelled "My Site". Starting to think more and more that I can't be bothered to move to Movable Type, despite their promise towards standards compliance. I'll probably just edit my template for my blog to match the template of my eventual site.

Oh and yes I went clubbing in Leeds last night. I really shouldn't do this, but what the hell, it's only Dion reading this shit anyway (hi Dion). Andrew's got quite a couple of fetching friends - I wonder who he's trying to hook up with. Both Hannah and Chloe were pretty hot, though I suppose Hannah's the one who really attractive - got the whole eurasian thing going for her - looks good with her hair tied back. Chloe was not surprisingly not as communicative, despite doing english, but then not everyone likes talking shop - she was very much more the brassy loudmouth (in an attractive way obviously) English girl type. How does he do it? :D. Men are so predictable, but then, well, it's fun to ogle pretty women. Like it's a crime.

Huh, trying to edit my

|

Huh, trying to edit my sidebar.

I've actually added a Site

|

I've actually added a Site Meter, which is rather novel, which you might notice on the left below the blogger button. Now I'll really know how few people give a rat's ass.

Hmm... trawling through the Opera

|

Hmm... trawling through the Opera forums, I've found rather interesting posts about CSS, some with tonnes of info: here, for instance.

Oh my god, this stupid

|

Oh my god, this stupid HTML course. Designed for mental midgets :D. Other than the fact that they have to hand-hold people through copying folders from one place to another it's not horrible... The good thing is that it makes you sit down and actually do junk, so it's not so pathetic, and apparently they'll get to things like css later. Garg. 4 more hours to go. Neither Clarissa nor Eugene were around so I'm stuck back in the computer room doing fuck-all. Woo followed by Hoo. But yes apparently Diet Vanilla Coke is catching on in this country and is at least more or less widely available. Cari must be told :D.

Hmm, maybe I'll have to

|

Hmm, maybe I'll have to change my mind about how useful mobile phone cameras are. Reminds me of the whole JC girls website thing in S'pore. waiting for this guy to get sued, but otherwise it seems pretty fun :D. Apparently the spirit of the JC girls thing hasn't died out a quick google search yielded this.

Feeling incredibly dissolute for not being more productive. Hopefully Emen's starting to get my subtle hints that asking about what I'm going to do after graduation are not welcome. Have resolved to clear up my room tomorrow, maybe even do my laundry and throw away all the stuff that needs throwing. Shall have to ask around about where's the best place to get free web hosting so I can start putting to use my limited html skill ahead of the comp service course.

Oh my god Microsoft makes

|

Oh my god Microsoft makes fan-fucking-tastic input hardware. They keyboard I got is definitely replacing the one I have in the states - the responsiveness is so wonderful, not as much resistence as the one I have - pity it's in UK format though. The mouse is fantastic, if anything the scrolling looks smoother than the old one, and the handling is sublime - pity it's very much USB only, so my switch is that bit less useful now. Muahaha.

Very happy to hear the

|

Very happy to hear the sound of the windows XP startup music again, after foolishly deleting my SUSE installation in the hope of installing Red Hat, which inexplicably refuses to start anaconda. Bastards. Had to reinstall Suse all over again, 2 hours of ftp install, fun fun fun.

Someone's been naughty and bought

|

Someone's been naughty and bought yet another keyboard and a nice new wireless ergonomic mouse. Oh dear. No prizes. I sooth my conscience by telling myself they'll go towards building the computers back in Singapore.

I must find out how to update Mozilla rather than just doing the install as I've done - makes using Ximian that bit harder. And I can't find the path to the Evolution executable. But the toolbar is pretty cool, and KDE icons are *perty*.

Clever open source people who

|

Clever open source people who make lovely workarounds for mouse gestures.

Now if only they'd detect

|

Now if only they'd detect my mouse buttons correctly for mouse gestures, I'd be pretty grateful. Opera does it fine, but then it's Opera.

I'm just now very very

|

I'm just now very very impressed with what previously was something pretty nonsense: Mozilla. On Linux it's seems to be the best browser of the lot, the smooth scrolling is AMAZING. It might just be me, but at present it's actually the one thing that's better on linux than on windows. And for whatever reason, I'm not so finicky about the size of toolbars in linux as in windows. woo hoo, score 1 for the browser that's gonna die out soon. :P

Installing Linux is one of

|

Installing Linux is one of those things that people do when they feel very very very free. And yet there's this absolutely strange draw about using it, despite all it's multitude of shortcomings. I've had SUSE 8.2 on my notebook, dual booting with XP for about a day now, and I find I'm using Suse more than XP. Not because it's better by any means, simply because XP has become boring. Linux, however, is not "boring".

I have never had this much headache installing and configuring a system ever. Well unless you count me installing Red Hat on Karen's comp. Kudos to Suse on Yast2, the installation interface that contols the apps that run the system - fantastically easy to use compared to Red Hat, which I could figure heads or tails of, even with the correct RPM's.

That said, running Opera on Linux isn't too bad, but disappointing after using the window's version. Having problems with font size (they're tiny) and scrolling is a bitch, it doesn't use global settings so while Konqueror is fine, Opera scrolls really slowly. And obviousl smooth scrolling sucks ass on Linux. Someone should tell these people what ergonomics is. And my mouse buttons are pretty much useless.

Oh and I have to bitch about Karen's keyboard, which is pissing me off right now. It's okay, but after hearing about Cari's wrists, I doubt I will ever voluntarily use a non-Natural Keyboard again. I'm considering buying one here just to use, and maybe to bring back for HK's father's system. We'll see. I'm also tempted to get the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer from dabs.com but feel myself ripe for being thought of as frivolous.

Didn't do anything useful today, will make a concerted effort to go and buy my ticket back to Chicago, book my room for graduation etc. tomorrow. Find out where that deadbeat Michel is and maybe I can be in Leeds by wednesday.

Oh, and Teo passed me a rather lovely link to a site that anyone trying to figure out html should visit - I'll post the link later when I'm not in Opera. Here.





Powered by Movable Type 4.1

About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the Blogger Entries category from June 2003.

Blogger Entries: May 2003 is the previous archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Opera web browser - downloadOpera Mini - Mobile Web Browser