What's related?

According to the Mozilla "What's related" sidebar, there is one page on the Internet that is related to www.feedmechocolate.com. What is it? Emmanuel: Songs Of Burgundy. Okay, I can sort of get that, it says Emmanuel in it. But then, apparently, a related web page to "Emmanuel: Songs of Burgundy" is the NetBSD Project. What is up with this "What's related" feature?

In related news, feedmechocolate.com now comes up on the first page of Google's search results for "Chris Mear". Yes! If you do a UK search, it comes out at number one! Unfortunately, searching for "Christopher Mear" still brings up this webpage.

Gaylords

Unbelievably, there is a new Worms-style Flash game at the BBC website, called Gaylords. It features weapons such as the Condom Missile, and the Rolling Tranny. Can someone please explain to me what they're trying to say?

Redesign

Now that I'm free from the shackles of work, I'm trying to redesign this site. I'm trying to do it in strict XHTML 1.0, and CSS 2, which should look beautiful if you're using the Gecko layout engine, and okay if you're using IE6. Except that IE6 has lots of annoying CSS bugs, including one where you can't select text in a <div> that's positioned absolutely... And I think it should work in the latest version of Opera. Haven't tested it on anything else yet, but I can guarantee that it will look crap on NN4. Just like everything else does. Also, it should render well in text-based or non-visual browsers, and any mobile Internet device. If you're interested in seeing prototypes as I test them, go here. (That directory might not hold a tested/working version at any particular time, but I'd still be interested in hearing how it renders on your platform.)

Also, I'm writing a new backend for the site, in ASP because my server runs nothing else. (Okay, it runs Perl, but with no database support, and there's no PHP either.) Again, it's really pointless and over-the-top for a silly little site like this, but it's a good learning experience.

"Hey, look where you're going!"

The Future Fate of the Milky Way Galaxy: Collision Scenario for the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies

"The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are approaching each other with a speed of 300,000 miles per hour. ..."

More phone joy

I'd forgotten to mention it while I was gushing about my phone earlier, but then Aurélien mentioned he'd looked up the specs, and I suddenly remembered the one most important, most wonderful, most incredible feature: it has TETRIS. Not some naff, knocked-off clone -- an actual, licensed version of Tetris. And it has a joystick to play it with!

No more bloody Snake for me, thank you very much. (Although it's got that as well.)

Knackered

I think I've cranked out about 2000 lines of brand new or edited code in the last 17 hours. My eyes ache. In the process, however, I've realised what I really like about web programming: it all just feels like such a big kludge. Writing server-side script that dynamically generates SQL/HTML/JavaScript, and passing variables about in URLs and things -- it's just not what the web was designed for, and for some reason that makes it a bit more exciting than simply calling Win32 API functions from a C++ program.

I'm not explaining this very well. And it's really not doing my street cred any good. But I feel vaguely inspired now to really sort out this website, and I haven't felt vaguely inspired about anything for a long, long time. So that's gotta be good.

Changes

I'm trying out a new way of labelling these posts. Also experimenting with style sheets. Neat dashed underline things for the links are courtesy of kottke. And they probably don't work on 80% of the browsers out there. Or something. But that doesn't matter, because it works for me. And I'm pretty certain no one else reads this stuff, anyway.

Bad Switch

Eek. It seems I have made my first major internet foul-up.

Apple Computers have been running a marketing campaign called Switch for a little while now. It's designed to encourage PC users to switch to Mac, and the TV ads feature real, ordinary people talking about how they made the switch.

At the MacWorld New York conference the other week, they unveiled a couple of new Switch ads, one of which featured a girl called Ellen Feiss. However, her ad was removed for a time from the Apple website, causing people to speculate that perhaps it was because she looked, well, a bit stoned. (Judge for yourself -- if you have QuickTime, you can view the ad.)

They were discussing this over at MetaFilter, and one poster suggested that someone should register www.ellenfeiss.com before someone unscrupulous did first, and made it redirect to some pr0n site, and made money off it.

So, I did.

Meanwhile, a number of sites were springing up with humourous takes on the whole "Is she high?" motif. Including one at www.wemakedotcoms.com. I went to this site yesterday, to find this message:

Thanks to an email from Eric. I just found out that someone registered www.ellenfeiss.com and decided to redirect to this page without consulting me. So for now I pull the plug. Sorry for the inconvenience. Blame it on the lame owner(s) of ellenfeiss.com.

Whoops. Go there yourself and find out what happened.

Hello? Customer service?

The chapel choir that I run has an account at Barclays Bank, my oh-so-favouritest bank in the world. I am currently on a quest to find out the balance of this account.

You see, in days gone by, I have been successful in extracting this information from them, at least a couple of times. Now, however, it seems that, in order to counter the sheer audacity of customers demanding information about their account between quarterly statements, their cashiers have been trained to invent their own security requirements for each new customer experience.

Past successful attempts:
Me:	Could you tell me the balance on that account, please?	C
Cashier:	Certainly, sir.
Me:	Oh, and, could you tell me what the balance of that account is, please?	C
Cashier:	Yes. Could you please confirm the address of the account?
Me:	Yup, it's Emmanuel College, Cambridge, CB2 3AP.
Cashier:	Okay, that's right, here you go.
Recent, unsuccessful attempts:
Me:	Could you give me the balance of that account?	D
Cashier:	Uhrm... well, it'll take about ten minutes...
Me:	(thinking: What?) Right...
Cashier:	Uhrm... (shrugs)
Me:	(leaves)
Me:	Oh, sorry, could you also tell me the balance on that account?	D
Cashier:	Can you prove that you are one of the signatories on the account?
Me:	Erm, well, how do I do that?
Cashier:	Well, is the statement sent to you?
Me:	Yes. (thinking: But it's actually sent to "The Senior Organ Scholar" rather than "Christopher Mear", so I can tell this is going to get confusing for her.)
Cashier:	Do you have any ID on you?
Me:	Well, yes, but it's sent to "Senior Organ Scholar", you see, and...
Cashier:	Well, let me just have a look. (taps away on terminal) I'm sorry, there's no name on the account so I can't help you.
Me:	(knowing that she is looking at a screen that says "Senior Organ Scholar" on it, which I have just confirmed to her, and thinking: What is that supposed to mean? That only somebody with no name is allowed to access the account? Or that my name actually has to be "Mr Senior O. Scholar"? How is anyone supposed to access the account if you need a name on the account, and there is no name on the account?) Right. Well, how am I supposed to find out my balance, then?
Cashier:	You'll have to get in touch with your branch.
Me:	(thinking: Oh yes, because they're much more likely to give the information to an anonymous voice on the phone, than to an actual person, actually standing in the branch, who has just paid in a cheque using the actual paying-in book for the account, which, along with a actual statement of the same account, he is currently holding) OK. Thank you.

Battery-powered pleasure, in the palm of your hand

I bought a new phone. It's small; it's shiny; it's in colour; it has flashing lights.

I think I'm in love.

Random navel-gazing

Firstly, I'm not sleeping enough. But now that I'm up early, I can spend a bit of time finishing off the itinerary of activities for Hawaii. It's gonna be so cool. Although at the moment I'm still finding it hard to push myself mentally past the stage of sheer funked-out panic that nothing's gonna go right, and that I'm gonna lose a dozen people in random airport cities around the US, or something.

Secondly, I'm back working at Unsworth this summer, and it's going pretty well. I'm really quite fortunate that they've offered me a job there every summer for the past few years, 'cause it saves me having to sort something out for myself, and we all know that would never happen. But while it's okay for a summer job, I've once again reached the conclusion that I don't think I could work in an office on a permanent basis. It's not so much the office environment itself, but rather that, after wading through traffic, getting home, and settling down, there seems to be so little time left in the week to get my own stuff done. It's frustrating dealing with all your personal business either during a one hour lunch break, or on Saturdays, when customer service is all busy and harassed.

Also, I like to cling on to my belief that I write my best code at night. I seem to just get much less distracted. I think I'll probably end up working for myself; although it will probably be more actual work ('cause you're actually dealing with all the 'running a business' stuff), there's more of a chance of being able to do it when it suits me, and I won't feel guilty for making personal calls outside of 12pm to 1pm.

What will I do? Probably web design, or some kind of related programming. For whatever reason, I'm actually quite interested in it, and despite the evidence of this site (which is less than spiffy at the moment), I'm actually quite good at it, when I actually spend some time on it. And maybe I'll keep something music-ey going on the side.

I don't know why I'm thinking about all this now, only that it's probably better than panicking about it when I graduate...

First post!

Well, here I am, wasting my time trying to get this thing to work. Blogger is, in theory, quite useful, but at the moment it just seems painfully flaky. I will have to roll my own site management thingamabob in ASP or something at some point. I was under the misguided notion that hacking together something with Blogger and server-side includes would be quicker to get up and running. Ha ha.

Also, this site really needs a redesign. That yellow is really starting to hurt. I can't even remember why we chose it in the first place. I think my brother may be to blame.

In other news, I have my fingers tightly crossed that Barclays won't muck up my cheque this time, and so I might actually not be bankrupt for the next month! Woo-hoo!