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blogonblogoff

blogonblogoff - side b

'everything is nothing if you've got no one'

Sunday, August 31, 2003

Yeah yeah yeah.
One of the great things about broadband is the ability to listen to radio stations from across the world at reasonable quality. In fact sometimes the quality is better than the reception I get on the BBC FM stations. I though Digital Radio would sort it but the BBC haven't switched on the transmitter around my area which is very annoying. Anyway the best thing I've heard today is Arthur Millar telling the story of the excellent Dr Seuss' Green Eggs And Ham on my favourite WFMU in New Jersey. There is some downright weird stuff to listen such is the diversity of the shows including some dogs barking to 'She Loves You'. I don't know whether I should be laughing at it or crying.
Posted by Edward @ 09:03 PM GMT
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This world is not aplenty
This is interesting. Earth Trends has loads of environmental data ranging from gas consumption to food and water resources. A stats heaven but looking at some of the maps can also reveal so much about the continents and the major differences in the developing world.
Posted by Edward @ 03:03 PM GMT
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Friday, August 29, 2003
Airated visual stimulation
About CSS designs, here's a great site CSS Zen Garden, a mighty impressive archive of designs using CSS only. Here's my Zen Garden submission Chocolate Bubble. I know a bit minimal compared to the others but massive background images take a while to load.
Posted by Edward @ 04:46 PM GMT
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He don't work and he don't sleep
Okay I did say I was going to keep up this blog but then that all got shot to pieces. I realised that with a normal working pattern, I wasn't exactly jumping to go on a computer when I got home to write about the day because I had just spent the previous eight hours in front of a screen.

Anyway about my new job. It's progressing slowly and sometimes I feel there could be a little more pace. Having previously worked in a 'new' media company I was used to being under pressure and getting things done quickly. Here it's a little different because the response to meeting requests and information can be slow. This obviously has it's advantages and disadvantages. I am using this to my advantage to focus on things a little more in the areas where I am getting responses and feedback. I am now able to exploit the skills of designing using CSS rather than tables which is great. There is still a debate whether to ditch Netscape 4 because of it's bad CSS2 support. The way I see it is that you are not necessarily forgetting about it, just the presentation won't be as good as on later version of graphical browsers. If you provide a nice stylesheet for older browsers it too can work. There are literally tens of browsers around and I am guessing most will not be displaying it the way you want. Important thing is that they can access the real information in a coherant manner.

Well other than work it's been all about listening to music. Not just from my room but from my landlady's son's new guitar amp. The neighbours are sure pleased with the breathtaking sonic submission pumping out at all hours.

Posted by Edward @ 04:40 PM GMT
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Sunday, August 17, 2003
No I made that from a kit last week
How to spend a weekend. Take one huge purple pinky network cable, one network router, one network card and one screaming kid = one massive headache. I wired the computers in my new place so that the broadband connection could be shared. Okay the wiring wasn't a problem apart from not having a proper hammer and the walls being so cheap that they seem to fall apart from a little tap, forgot to mention that I was wiring it up three floors. Anyway the network was working fine. Only problem was my network card in my laptop. It was completely refusing to work properly. So I spent about eight hours and 50 crashes before I finally got the conflict sorted. I was on the verge of giving up but it just started working which was a relief as I was about to rebuild the machine.

So Manchester City start the season off with a win, but Liverpool go down at Chelsea (warning LFC site is the slowest one I've ever used, I helped to sort out a few problems for the site when it was relaunched a few years ago, but it seems to have become even slower).

Posted by Edward @ 06:09 PM GMT
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Thursday, August 14, 2003
Right back into the swing of things
It's been a while hasn't it? I literally took a month off at the end of my course when I headed back up north. I debated for a while of whether to keep this blog updated.

The original purpose has changed but I will continue it as long as I feel there is something to write about. Sometimes this blog has been a bit mundane and me just whining about work, hopefully less or more of that as today I start a new job. Back to being a Web Developer. I will write more about what I have been up to later on.
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So new job and new location. I'm not sure I like moving around too often going from one end of the country to the other, though at the moment it's fine just so that I can do a job to get more experience. So what have I been up to in the inbetween month I didn't blog? Here's a quick summary.


  • Go back home to parents sharing a room with my brother. The house is still as much of a tip as it was six months ago.

  • Dad has taken up golf and so he is trying to get everyone else to try it. Go to the driving range with him. I am completely useless and spend more time swinging into thin air than hitting the actual balls. Made me admire the people who can hit a ball where they want it. Not likely I will be taking it up soon though.

  • Spend a lot of money on books, not just any old books, but a bunch of accessibility and usability books. Managed to get quite a good bargain with them as the publisher was in trouble.

  • Having spent my money, I find out later that my overdraft is nearing breaking point. Might need to grovel to the manager to extend it. I'm in my worst financial situation for years.

  • Settle into my new place. Lots of annoying things that I can't get used to. From a cold bright room to smallish dull ground floor room. It's still cold though. I don't think I've quite settled into it yet.

  • Redo a big part of my This Room Of Wonder site after the responses from the Submerge exhibition. You can now explore my room in more glorious Flash. All done in nifty XML too even though it makes it slower.

  • Start a new job being a Web Developer. So far I have expected most of the things that have happened. Won't go into detail until I'm more comfortable there.


Okay it wasn't that interesting and you haven't missed much. There's other things going on which have been interesting though including new Digital Radios, the new version of OS X, loads of great records including two brilliant EPs by Aidan Smith, and a great album by Manecas Costa on the Late Junction label, first saw him at the opening of the Bath Music Festival. Speaking of which they finally did an opening of the new Bath Spa's, although they are not open to the public for a few months. It was delayed for ages.
Posted by Edward @ 07:04 PM GMT
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Tuesday, August 12, 2003
That was that and this is this
It's been a while hasn't it? I literally took a month off at the end of my course when I headed back up north. I debated for a while of whether to keep this blog updated.

The original purpose has changed but I will continue it as long as I feel there is something to write about. Sometimes this blog has been a bit mundane and me just whining about work, hopefully less or more of that as today I start a new job. Back to being a Web Developer. I will write more about what I have been up to later on.

Posted by Edward @ 08:34 AM GMT
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