Rob's Ego Trip!

Today's been a productive day! I've fixed a couple of niggles on the car - rear windscreen washer now works, as does the rear fog lights. Also, I've fixed a couple of other bits round the house so we now have a working outside light and a towel ring that's not falling off the wall!

I met famous Amy!

Yesterday was my last day at Mustardhouse and on Monday I start a new job with Campbell Shaw. At lunchtime we went down the pub and had a beer. I was given a large box of Cadbury's "Heros" along with a bottle of Champagne. I think they were trying to tell me that I should celebrate leaving rather than they were celebrating that I had left!

This colour picker is cool! (Found via Glazblog)

I have a couple of issues with the "Big Conversation":

1. It's a complete waste of time. Tony Blair doesn't listen to his backbenchers or his party conference... there's no way he'll listen to the rest of us.
2. It's been stated that the results will be used for Labour's manifesto for the next election. In that case, does this mean that Labour is paying for this "Big Conversation" or is the tax payer?

In the tech field this time!

Lindows is a competitor to Microsoft Windows and the CEO writes an infrequent blog. Today's entry shows the pressure that MS is putting on Lindows resellers. The most interesting thing is that the boss is prepared to fly from the US to the meeting in The Netherlands to be with the reseller. That's good support!

Have a look at this clock using IE...

Congratulations to the population of Georgia for teaching their politicians that vote-rigging is not the way to win friends and influence people! I'm very impressed that their was no violence and the people got their way. It's great to know that the populace in a democracy can make a difference without resorting to violence.

Off to Blackpool to meet up with some Britlore friends. Jon's staying with Jen and Tim and so is estatic at the idea of seeing Leah and Jack again!

Whilst channel hopping last night, Georgina came across the documentary about Michael Jackson that was put out after the Bashir one to show what a scroat Bashir was. I really don't have an opinion on whether Jackson is guilty of the new charges against him at the moment as we haven't heard any of the evidence. Presumably we'll hear much much more when it comes to trial.

The documentary was reasonably pro-Jackson, even though they spent a lot of time assuring us that he had no editorial control. The main thing I got from it was that he thinks and behaves very naively and really should employ someone prepared to tell him "that's not a good idea" (and listen when he is told that!). Another thing that came out is how mad his fans are. Jackson goes out and is immediately mobbed - it must be very trying.

Fascinating comment by DR Reid yesterday when trying to persuade Labour backbenchers to vote for the Government's plan for a two tier health service: "Look at the benches opposite". So the Government is worried about the Tories again if it's resorting to scare tactics when talking to it's own side.

Of course, if I was Tony, I'd be far more worried about my own back benchers than the opposition at the momeent. A 17 majority means a lot labour back benchers voted against the Government on a 3-line whip vote... Not to mention that the policy was rejected at the Labour party conference.

Today is 12-week scan day and it's late as the scan determined that the baby is 13weeks, 3 days old! Due date is 24th May apparently, but I bet he/she doesn't keep to that schedule...

Wow!

The Mozilla bug that I reported has been fixed! Clearly it was the clarity of the original bug submission that helped ensure that the bug wasn't pushed down the priority list into the no-mans land of "never to be fixed"...

Beginning to dislike Mondays as they take *ages*!

On the plus side, I've nailed a couple of bugs which were annoying me and I've implemented a new category of products for our primary e-commerce customer :)

We watched Toy Story 2 this evening. It's a good film, with the best bit being the outtakes when the credits roll!

Note to self: don't use the receipe book that came with the microwave. We've now had two meals from it and neither have been good. The wine we had with the meal this evening wasn't anything to write home about either - almost vinegary :(

The www.mozilla.org redesign has gone live. Very nice it looks too.

Incidentally, I came across the same issue that jwz had a while ago. I wanted to centre the content in a <p> tag and have a border around it that was the width of the content, not the width of the page. If you read the comments in the jwz post, you see that the CSS way is to use "display:table" and all is right with the world. Except that I couldn't get IE to support "display:table"...

Guess what? I ended up using a <table> just like jwz did :)

Oops, forgot to mention that the server that hosts the-allens.net was relocated yesterday :(

Everyone involved in the web should read this article by mpt.

The jury in the trial of Ian Huntley have been shown the site where the bodies were found. I am at a loss as to why they have been shown this. How will it help them determine if the evidence laid before them means that he is guilty or innocent? As far as I can see, all it will do is make the prosceution's case easier by invoking additional feelings of sympathy with the victims. I'm probably wrong here and there's a vital reason why the jury must see this patch of ground. Can someone tell me what it is?

Whilst they are at it, can some one also tell me what Mr Blunkett is about? The only good thing about this compulsory ID card thing is that there's 10 years for the Government to learn all the problems with it that other countries have already learnt!

Stupid browser doesn't support the CSS property "min-width"! grrr...

If you need this style, the look here for a solution that work in IE5+/Win. Unfortunately it doesn't work in IE/Mac. I have also heard that using a 1px gif that's the same width as the min-width you want should work too.

Spent all day with Jon today. We spent most of the day playing with his new "Toby" engine. He got it for doing so well at potty training yesterday (no accidents!). He's now trying to persuade us to get the rest of the "set" by dropping hints like "buy Gordon tomorrow?"

Very subtle, my son!

Seems, that I have haven't shaken the this cold thingy yet :( Today's been really horrible as I've been feeling very under the weather. It was so bad, that the fry-up I cooked for lunch was virtually inedible!

So, Michael Portillo is tired of Westminster. Maybe that documentary he did where he stepped into the shoes of a single mum for a week did have an effect? Maybe he's worked out that to most of us, what happens in the House of Commons is immaterial to our daily lives until the Government decides to hit us in our pockets or break public services? If so, then all MPs should have to spend a week or two being with a normal family...

The Bank of England raised interest rates today to 3.75%. The move was hardly unexpected as last month, only the governer's casting vote prevented a rise. 0.25% doesn't sound like much does it? Apparently it means ?9 per month extra on a ?60,000 mortgage. Not too bad. However, the smart money is on the trend continuing until we're at 5% by the end of 2004. 5%... that's getting on for a ?50 per month rise in the mortgage payment... that's gonna hurt some people.

Fortunately we're on a fixed rate for the next 2 years and we have negligible debt as a result of paying nearly everything off with the house move money. Unfortunately, we have no savings either :)

I had a light bulb moment this morning! For the last 3 or 4 days at work, I've been struggling with a Flash problem that I couldn't work out how to solve without making the moving an 8MB download. Yesterday, I stopped thinking about it at lunchtime and went on to think about another problem to do with databases. Driving into work this morning, I was thinking about how Dame Shirley Porter may hopefully soon have to pay for her diabolical behavior 10 years ago and out of nowhere I had an idea on how to solve my Flash problem! Now, I don't know if it will work, but it's a different approach to any that I've tried so far and I have reasonably high hopes.

What a nice start to the day.

Radio 1's lead story today has been about how P2P networks are used for distribution of pornographic images and especially paedophilic images. Well duh!

In just about every case of the introduction of new technology, porn has been one of the early adopters. It's been true for printing, home cine cameras, the video recorder, the video camera, websites, etc and so it has been for P2P networks. In fact, I would guess that a porn image was downloaded across a P2P network within the first month of the first system being available.

It's hardly news.

Michael Howard was on Radio 4's Today programme this morning and sounded very much like a leader. I was quite impressed though very aware that he was just talking very broad strokes. We'll have to see what happens as the months go by, but certainly from what he was saying, I want to look a lot more closely at the Tory proposals than I did.

I can't help thinking that when he was Home Secretary crime reduced by getting on for 20%... and that sounds like an OK record to me. I'm not sure I care that he was an unpopular Home Secretary as he got results. Maybe that's why he was unpopular?

Much more research to do I think, but so far, I'm thinking that vote is definitely "up for grabs" this time around.

Yesterday, I took Jon down to London to see Mum & Dad. Georgina stayed at home to get going on her NaNoWriMo thingy.

Jen & Tim were down with Leah and Jack too, so Jon was assured a good time :) He really enjoyed seeing the trains again and for the first time was allowed to turn the controller to make the trains start and stop. It won't be long before he starts to understand how it works. We also went to the park to play on the swings and slides. Jon managed to stay reasonably clean whereas Jack managed to sit down in at least one puddle!