Rob's Ego Trip!

John Leslie is innocent of all charges brought against him. His career and he life has been shattered whilst his accusers identities are protected by law. There is something wrong with the current situation in this country.

Mozilla released version 0.6.1 of Mozilla Firebird recently. It's shaping up to be a really nice browser. For me the lack of popups, the rendering speed and tabbed browsing are the killer features. Oh, and it has a nice icon now too :)

The original Beetle is finally stopping production after 21,529,464 being built. That's a lot of cars! There's an interesting article about the initial manufacture of the car - I bet not many people realised that the British army ordered the first 20,000!

I've discovered that there's a VNC server for Mac OS9. This is good as it means I can view one of our Macs from my Windows PC and therefore, I'm actually prepared to test our sites on Macs :)

We've discovered that our new survey uses some JavaScript that doesn't work on Mac IE, so I'd better debug it...

was an angel yesterday apparently, so I thought I would record this here for when I forget...

for the new computers continued apace last night as I built the desk that they will be going on.

Looking back over the years, I've always built my desk for home use. I don't know why, but I think it's related to wanting something "just right". The first desk I built myself was when I was a teenager. Probably around 15 or 16. Dad had aquired some blockboard from one of his customers that was throwing it out and I decided to use some to create a desk running the width of my bedroom - about 7'. It was great - lots of room to put stuff on :) When I went to university, I did the same thing. I needed a desk, so I built a stand-alone one that could be easily dis-assembled and re-assembled.

The next desk needed was when we moved into our first flat together and needed a computer desk. I wanted to make the best use of the available space and so custom-built a desk that was "just right" for a fraction of the cost of specialised computer desks. That's what I've done this time too. We don't have a lot of space in our new house, so I've built a desk that will house our two computers and a printer but not be overbearing :)

Overall, I'm very satisfied with how it turned out.

We watched the Tigger Movie over the weekend and whilst watching I was sure that I knew the voice of the narrator. When the credits came on at the end, I saw it was John Hurt.

So, I said to Georgina that I did know that narrator's voice and that it was John Hurt! Jon's face crumpled as he thought that I meant that either Jon was hurting or that I was going to hurt Jon! Georgina tried to comfort him (I was the big bad!) whilst I tried very hard to stop laughing.

Poor mite!

Happy Anniversary to us!

An article in The Independant says this:

"Tony Blair has put off the launch of a plan to compel every Briton to hold an ID card in response to fears that it will turn into an expensive and frustrating assault on liberty."

I say: WooHoo!

Hopefully "put off" is a code phrase for "killed"...

Thanks to Tom Watson for the heads-up.

came up to visit us today. Mum wanted to see the house and my descriptions over the phone just didn't cut it! Was good to see them and Jon had a great time too. We went out for a short walk to show Mum & Dad the area, but it started raining almost immediately, so we didn't get very far before having to come back.

Georgina saw an advert in the local paper for a second hand "Little Tikes" Car. So last night I went to Driotwich and got it for Jon :)

Unfortunately, it's raining today, so he can't play with it as it's a garden toy.

Jon locked us out of his room this morning by opening a drawer in his bed that prevented the door to his room opening. Most distressing for us as we had to get him to close the drawer when all he wanted to do was get out to us and have a cuddle.

We've now moved the bed...

I currently use Mozilla Firebird as my main browser. It's very fast and works well. However, I've just discovered that Mozilla 1.4 (and higher) have a "Go To Line" option in the View Source window...

Update
Whilst looking for related bugs about using an external editor with Mozilla/Firebird, I discovered Mozex which does 90% of what I want - just no keyboard shortcut...

Update 2
Woohoo! I've successfully modified Mozex so that I can just press F9 to bring up the source code to the current page in my editor :)

Went out for a drink with Tim last night and discovered that there's a Pub quiz on Tuesdays. We were particularly poor and came last but one!

Georgina's been watching Shackleton over the last couple of evenings. (Lack of computers is killing us!) I've not been that interested as whilst I know the story of Shackleton's attempted crossing of the Antartic, I'm not a fan. However, I've been quite suprised at how good the film is; It's very watchable.

I have just ordered new computers from Mesh Computers. Their online ordering system doesn't give you much feedback and says to expect the order confirmation by post which is a bit odd. Also, the anticipated delivery date will be on the order confirmation, so I don't even know when they will arrive!

It'll be nice to be using computers that were built in this century :)

Didn't blog yesterday as was too busy. I finished putting up shelves around 10:45 pm last night and with our current setup, the whole idea of getting out the laptop and plugging it in just didn't appeal...

On the plus side, we've got all the bathrooms finished and have nearly completed our bedroom! Just have to get some glue, a fan and a full length mirror to complete the upstairs :)

Frustrating day today. We tried to sort out the bathroom accessories for our en-suite and the downstairs cloakroom. Not too difficult a job - just go to Homebase and buy some towel rails, glass shelves, etc. So we get up a little later than planned (there's something about Saturday's that make early starts really hard!) and head to Homebase.

First problem, Georgina would prefer brushed chome rather than shiny chrome. We don't see any, so decide to head over to the other side of town where I'm sure I've seen a B&Q. No such luck, it's another Homebase! We have a look anyway - no luck, so go home empty handed for Jon's nap.

Whilst Jon is asleep, we discover that there isn't a B&Q in Worcester (but there are 3 Homebases!) so we decide to go with Shiny chrome. Go to Homebase in afternoon and pick up some bits, but other bits aren't in stock. So we end up going all the way over to the other side of town again to the other Homebase to pick up rest of bits.

So all in all, we visited Homebase four times today!

From Mitchell's Journal:

"Went to play Go last night in St Albans, played against a 6 kyu, I had a 9 stone advantage ... and I WON! WOOHOO!!!"

Mitchell has turned off comments on his blog, so just wanted to say "Well done"!

I thought that I would get back up on my personal soap box and have another look at the reasons why we went to war.

Tony Blair again managed to show the complete disregard he has for the House of Commons and the British people by last night shifting his position even futher away from the original reasons for the war in Iraq. In case people are forgetting, He told the House of Commons and us that Saddam Hussain's Iraq was an immediate threat to us with weapons that could be deployed against us within 45 minutes of the order being given.

There was an interesting piece on the Today programme today with a couple of Labour MPs talking about Tony Blair's speech. One of them was saying that in his speech Last night, Tony Blair was saying that the removal of the dictator was the right thing to do regardless of any terrorist or weapons of mass destruction threat. This MP also said that because the way the UN worked, the justification for war had to be related to weapons of mass destruction.

I don't know about you, but I would have prefered my Government to have been honest with me before the war. More importantly, it was pretty clear before the war that regime change on it's own was illegal under international law. Now apparently it's ok? Hmm... You have to wonder if the House of Commons would have backed a war to just remove the government of Iraq if the MPs had known that there was no weapons that could be used against us.

It think that Mr Blair is continuing his campaign to soften us up as the chances of finding any chemical, nuclear or biological weapons in Iraq grows less and less likely. He is hoping that we will forget what he said before and will believe what he says now.

Not all of us are as gullible as you believe, Mr Blair.

I bet Mr Blair is desperately hoping that peace, democracy and a better standard of living for the people of Iraq comes soon. If only for the sake of his premiership.

I put up more bathroom cabinets last night. Hopefully that's all of em! Still, we are slowly getting there - another fortnight and we should have most of it done.

We also did some sort of budget last night and it was depressing reading. I need to get a pay rise if we want to keep the same standard of living that we had in Croydon. It's a certainty that we won't be getting new computers yet :(

Netscape seems to be officially dead. Mozilla is now run by an independant organisation.

The interesting thing will be to see if the Gecko browser's market share increases over the next few months. Maybe Opera will grow - shame it has so many annoying CSS issues! One thing is certain, with Safari officially released, we have to write our sites so that they work with the kHTML engine anyway.

to the HSBC bank who have created a mortgage the complies with Islamic law. Apparently, Muslims are not allowed to borrow money that must be paid back with interest, which obviously causes issues when trying to buy a property as that's a lot of cash required!

Full story, courtesy of the BBC is here.

We are very slowly going through the house one room at a time and getting the stuff we need to make it habitable.

We've now (reasonably) sorted Jon's room and the master bathroom. Next on the list is shelves for the spare room...

We are now "settled" in the new house. Well, I use the word, settled, when I really mean that we are in denial about the boxes in the garage!

We don't have flat rate internet access yet (hopefully today!), so haven't been keeping up the blog.

We went to the family BBQ this weekend. Jon had a great time with his cousins Leah(3) and Jack(18 months), but the most fun was had with cousin Anna(20-something!) who was a saint and entertained the horrorschildren with games of hide and seek and chase :)

Today is of course work day, so I'm trying to work out what my current priority list is along with sorting out some of the change of addresses I need to get done.

Well, bits of have done. Pickfords arrived when they said they would arrive. 3 blokes trooped in and I showed them all the stuff they needed to pack and load. Then I went and sat down and read a book (making coffee periodically). They took a little longer than the estimated time, but never mind.

The bad news was that we didn't complete as we should have done... *sigh*. It seems that the mortgage money for the people at the bottom of the chain didn't arrive until just after their bank stopped doing outgoing transfers for the day. Typical really. So with any luck, completion will be tomorrow morning...

Today we move... Pickfords are due to arrive, pack and then cart off all our possessions. The plan is that they will then deliver them to our new address in Worcester tomorrow morning...

One day to go and Jon's been packed off to his Nana's along with Georgina. I have dismanteled lots of furniture and disconnected the washing machine and diswasher. The only stuff remaining to dismantle are the computer and that can wait until bedtime :)

Now for a beer and a pizza!

Two days to go, so I thought we'd get the utilities sorted out for the new place. All the lists about what to do when tell you to do this with 2 weeks to go... Every company so far has told me to phone up on Moving day itself and that they can't do anything until then.

Gonna be a busy day on Wednesday...

Jon had a temperature last night :( He was really hot and the temperature didn't seem to go down very fast after giving him Nurofen. So he slept in our bed. Jon decided that it was his bed and it's amazing how much room 2' of Jon takes up in a double bed!

As a result neither myself or Georgina got much sleep last night and have been a bit snappy at each other this morning.

Fortunately, the temperature is gone this morning and Jon seems much happier than yesterday, so hopefully he's over it now...

The monitor attached to my PC has been playing up for a while now. It tends to have trouble keeping a constant brightness. A new level of problem has occured now... when I start up DAoC, the monitor shuts down until I reboot the computer.

Very frustrating!

Mostly doing datbase work today. As I don't have MSSQL Server here, I've been converting my project so that it works on either MSSQL or MySQL. For this particular one, we don't really need any of the MSSQL clever stuff (except maybe foreign keys) and so the changeover has been nice and simple.

The decision to use the ADOdb Database Library for PHP has made the job much simpler!

Jon hasn't been very well since he had a vaccination earlier this week. Yesterday it started affecting his breathing and at midnight Georgina called me to say that she thought she might have to take him to hospital.

As a result I drove back from Wales overnight and got here about 3 this morning. Jon was sleeping by then though still wheezing very much. This morning he seems a bit better and had no problems attacking his breakfast :)

Me? I'm knackered and working from home...

Update
Doctor reckons that Jon has got Croup.

Mozilla 1.4 is now out. This looks like it's the best one yet, so if you aren't using Firebird, I recommend it. Interestingly Netscape have released version 7.1 at the same time. NS7.1 is basically the same as Mozilla 1.4 only it has additional extras like bundled Flash plugins and ICQ/AIM clients.

are horrible! Still at work at gone 7pm and have been in since 8 this morning.

On the plus side, I think we've got something to be proud of to show off tomorrow :)

I'm going home now - the final checking can wait until tomorrow...