Now I understand why people get annoyed with the "Funny" modifier. I recieved one "Funny" moderation, and two "Overrated" moderations, meaning the score went down by one, but my karma went down by two! That's really annoying. Maybe "Overrated" and "Underrated" shouldn't affect karma either. Grrrrrrr!
Woo my karma just went up to "Good"!
I modded this comment as offtopic, because it was a stupid and pointless thing to say. Maybe if he'd provided some detail in the message it would have been useful, but the comment doesn't even say what software he's talking about. Bah! "Who moderates the meta-moderators?"
I'm moving my journal back to dyefade.net, on account of my having just installed PHP-Nuke. Took me a while to get used to using the system, but I'm quite impressed overall. I need a new logo now. And I need an excuse to download and mess with Gimp 2... how things work out for the best.
I got my first +5 today, with 18 (almost all positive/useful) replies. Wow, makes me feel good. Doesn't get my Maths coursework done though.
Anyway, I'm moving back over to dyefade.net, so this will be my last journal post for a while.
Just read this article about people having disablities using the internet. WTF?
I'm all up for making things accessible, especially as this usually correlates with good design anyway, and I agree that "The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act" seems like a good idea, but the "GOOD WEBSITE DESIGN CHECKLIST", seems to be out of line.
"Ensure good colour contrast between foreground and background" - why should a web designer!? if they're paying for webspace and want to put weird colour combinations together, that's up to them! usually they'd be ill-advised to, but it's still their choice.
"Avoid movement in pages", "Avoid pop-ups and don't change window without telling the user" - the web has been becoming gradually more dynamic and animated, new technologies (e.g. flash/java/dhtml), are making websites more exciting, but no, not everyone can read them, so we should get rid of them all! just like we should get rid of cars because not everyone can drive them. And hills, because not everyone can climb them.
"Clearly identify the target of each link" - seems like common sense, yes, but i disagree with this too. As an example, the icons on slashdot. They have no text labels, but most of the icons are self explanatory, and if they had text labels, that would change the size and screw up the layout.
"Use the clearest and simplest language possible" - and also The Times have to do this as well because the big words are confusing. And only English is allowed on the internet because other languages are hard to read. For people who don't understand them.
Grrrrr and the BBC are supposed to be responsible!
Just finished watching ER as well... it can be quite dark at times.
Selfish post, just a list of things so I can get everything clear in my head. I DON'T want this holiday to just slip away like all holidays do, especially with the exams so close.
Things I need/want to do this holiday:
Things I'll talk about here sometime soon:
So I guess there's all this to look forward to. Stay tuned etc.
yeah, slashdot can be strange, as is often observed.
see this post, linked to the mars rover article.
it's been modded down as offtopic, which is true, it is away from the topic of the article, but there is a lot of truth in the comment, and now that I have moderator points to burn (well three left now), I'm tempted to mod the post up... I probably won't, but it just makes you relise how shallow Slashdot, and the IT/tech/research industry as a whole can be. People here (including me), get all excited about some new game or software update or whatever, but miss the fact that there's a whole other world out there somewhere. Ho hum.
'Few things...
I "finished" all the coursework by Wednesday, which was sort-of good. I think the psychology went OK, but if I get a grade at all for the computing I'd be happy.
Nevermind... I've decided that it'd be fine to go to Reading University next year (as opposed to Manchester). The lowest offer I've recieved from Manchester is ABB, which I don't think I'm going to get. The lowest offer I got from Reading was BBB, which I should/could get, but I think they're a lot more lax with grades than Manchester anyway.
Didn't go out too much this week due to the ammount of work I had on. Yesterday (Thursday) I (we, inc Lou & Kate) drove to Birmingham to go to Ikea (i bought some new shelves), and the Bullring (I wasn't desparate to go, but there was a sale at HMV, and I bought some Tsing Tao from a Chinese supermarket nearby). Ho Hum.
Then last night was Roz's party. The barmen were weirdly strict, not letting people buy alcohol. The party finished around twelve, then we smoked some more bud (which involved hot-boxing Dockery's car), and went and slept at Dan's.
Tonight, I'm staying in. 'Cos that's how exciting I am.
Saturday... I'm going to visit my grandmother in hospital, then in the evening we're (a reasonable size group) are going to Worcester. Haven't been out in Worcester in ages (though I now have a "Tramps Privelege Card"). Hopefully that'll be fun.
So, until next time...
I'm addicted to anime. Thought I'd mention that first off.
So... what's happened? Went to see Einaudi, which was really amazing, I would definately go again. See Doug's and Colin's comments (Colin's changed his frames so the diary is easier to get to). I don't know enough about this piano-tomfoolery to be able to say anything useful really, so you're better off with those two.
I'm also now addicted to broadband. Just leaving the computer on with KazaaLite running is such a good thing to do, I could download half or more of a 700mb film in a good afternoon. There is muchos video out there on the net, for example the latest issue of B3ta.
Went for a Chinese on Friday, which was good, it doesn't take much to convince me we need chinese food. After that we went into Spoons, which was fairly boring, though it's always fairly amusing being with Ben and Jamie (who we met).
Then we (that is, Sam, Jay and me), drove to Kemerton (of all places - though I guess it's more convenient for Sam), to smoke some of the bud I bought the previous week. I was too hasty before in saying that block is just as good as skunk for the price, even at double the price bud is worth it.
There is a downside to all this leisure of course. Both the pyschology and the computing courseworks have to be given in on friday, and due to the anime, the net and the weed... I'm behind on both.
(N.B. Reading back it's strange that I described the anime and the broadband as addictions, but not dope, when the only available evidence would be the other way around. (Just because cannabis is reported to be less addictive that nicotine doesn't mean it isn't addictive.) In any case nothing here is substantial enough to count as addiction.)
Never mind. The fact that the weather is generally nice (if highly changable) with spur me on to work late into the night... for the next three ngihts. Grrr why don't I do more work when I'm told to!?
Only three days of school left though, which is good. Roz's party is on Thursday, need to work out what to do after that.
P.S. check out Dearz' "blog", hosted by Doug. It's a little young right now, but assuming he keeps posting to it, could be quite funny.
Right. Haven't updated in a while, so I'll do so now.
I haven't updated, because I had no internet, then I went to Prague, then I couldn't be bothered.
(Obviously I'm pretty drunk, but we'll get to that.)
Firstly, I have a good CD collection (though I just left my Digable Planets CD in Sams car). I got in to my room, picked up a CD at random, and it was a good choice! (Pulp Fiction soundtrack).
Prague
Prague was... a lot of fun. Yeah, to be honest, I enjoyed the whole thing a lot. Very little educational stuff, a lot of beer, a lot of girls/stripshows, yeah, will be going back soon hopefully.
Next... work, most of which I haven't done. Still. Not to worry.
New Car!!!
Yes! The Nissan was written off (RIP) in the night by some scum with a screwdriver and not enough brains to disable a immobiliser. Twats. Anyway, New car!! Maroon Vauxhall Corsa GLX 1.4 5door. I'm pretty pleased with it.
Last Night
We (in short, Sam and I) went to Massaz. It wasn't awesome, but it wasn't that bad either, it was just a regular night. Unlike...
Tonight
Hmmm.... we went to Karens party. It was really shitty.... but as I discussed with Helen, she doesn't know that, because everyone she spoke to told her what a good party it was!
Spoke to Imogen, which was good, but i went off her in the middle of talking to her, which was bad. Brett and Adam were quiet, which was normal, but weird.
That's it... I'm gonna talk to Niki now, cos she's nice but far away.;)
A lot has happened since I last updated, and most of it was interesting at the time, but now it's not exciting enough to bother posting.
I've had no internet access at home for about a week
Umm... work. Yes, I've done it. Ok, no, I haven't finished it yet. Yeah, school work. There is so much to do right now. I have more schoolwork on at the moment than I've ever had. Computing coursework, psychology coursework and essays, maths assessments, it's too much. Well, I guess it wouldn't be if I did a lot of work, but I never have before, and I don't intend to start now.
I'm in such a good mood for some reason. Not much has changed... but I'm just happy:p.
A few random things... I bought the Darkness album last summer (before they were really famous), and didn't like it that much, so I put it on my rack and left it. Then I Believe In A Thing Called Love took off and everyone seemed to love them, except me
How many varieties of english are there? Dearz and I were messing about in Computing reading random blogs, (Google for "Random Blogs") and we found, well, we found a load of rubbish, which is what we were looking for, but the text didn't seem to be in english as we know it. A lot of what we read was largely made up of english words, but with no attention paid to spelling or grammar/conventional writing styles. It was revealing to think that we've always assumed that talking to people who speak english would be simple, but if people don't follow english rules, this might not be the case. Maybe it's just that Americans are wierd (this seems to be an acceptable answer to most things).
On the whole, linux rules. Fedora is a well put together distro. There are so many high quality programs available to Linux now, the future looks really bright for the OS and for Free software in general. Even ogg is gaining support.
Soon I'm thinking of posting notes on a project I've been thinking too much about. Ideas had been forming in the back of my mind, but as soon as I made the decision to discontinue Cosmos they all came into focus and developed. I need to write something down at least.
In town on Saturday (I don't know when this will be uploaded), Doug pointed out something slightly worrying (though not for me). When tapes were a standard audio format, dubbing was rife, but the tapes are of such a crap quality anyway that it wasn't really a problem for the industry. Now that CD's are a standard, copying (or more commonly mp3ing) of them is an increasing (though still not desparately significant) problem for record companies.
In film, DVD is slowly but surely becoming the accepted format (over the ancient VHS tapes). Copying VHS tapes was, like dubbing audio cassette's awkward, and it produced low quality results. Now that DVD's are available, and ripping them (natively, or to DivX) is relatively painless (if rather slow), will DVD ripping become a problem in the same way as CD ripping? All the time bandwidth gets cheaper and storage more available, maybe we will soon see the film industry complaining like the music industry is at the moment. Hmmm.
Right... so it's 01:12am, and the coursework's in at 09:30. I plan to work for maybe another hour then go to bed, cos I'm just Cosmos-ed out. The project is nothing like complete, but apparently this is just a draft hand-in day (though we've been told it's the final). I think Doug mentioned the 4th of March, but I don't know where he got that from. Anyway, Berry can have what I've done, but I estimate the report is just under half finished.
That's so pathetic, I've been working on this for months (nearly a year).
I just finished reading Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, I enjoyed it, but I wasn't going to mention it. A large part of the book deals with homosexuality, which just happened to be what Colin discussed in his blog the other day. Normally I don't really come into contact with (and therefore don't think about) homosexuality, but it was weird that I read both views so close together in time. Erm, so yeah, that's interesting. I really have no view either way, but suffice to say that the two opinions expressed were very different.
The computing coursework is in for Friday... there's no way it's going to be done, to be fair. And it's only my A-Levels --> Uni placement.
I remember I had something really relevant and interesting to say... but I've completely forgotten. Oh yeah, I just saw about the Brit on the news getting his George Cross, and I wondered why he hadn't got the Victoria Cross, being wounded in battle and all. Then the BBC guy explained: he wasn't actually wounded in battle. The only wounds he suffered were caused by American "friendly" fire. Bet they never thought of that when they invented the award. (That wasn't the thing I forgot. I still can't remember what it was.)
Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk?
