This morning I wrote a programming spec for the website I’m currently writing. This hasn’t been too taxing as it’s a simple enough site with the only “difficult” bit already written up in the “Project Scope” document.

The nicest thing about this site is that I’ve had some input into the technology used, so it’s being written in PHP with a database abstration layer (ADOdb). The database is SQL Server 2000. Not my first choice, but the company currently has an SQL Server 2000 system set up so it makes sense to utilise it.

Whilst looking up Coldplay’s website, came across the Top 40 chart on the BBC site.

All very good looking.

Then I noticed the Text only link so I clicked it. The BBC website is regularly cited as an example of a good website. Mainly because it’s the most popular website in Europe, so it must be doing something right. What the hell is with the text only version ?!?!? I mean, come on! surely the BBC with all that license money could come up with something that looks a little bit better for a top 40 list for text-only viewers ?

Further investigation shows that the BBC uses a tool called Betsie to generate it’s text only pages. Now Betsie is really clever and you can change the default text font/colours that it displays. I’m very impressed. The source is also available.

The only question then becomes “why did they choose those colours and sizes by default ?!?!?!?” On an 800×600 screen you can’t see much content!

At work we have Radio 1 on all day. As you can imagine, it plays songs that are “current” several times a day… for weeks on end!

I am so fed up of Coldplay‘s Clocks that I can’t wait for it to drop off the list!

I’ve upgraded the engine that runs this blog to the latest version. Not sure if the improvements make any difference to me yet, though. The ability to back up the skins might be useful I suppose, but I trust our sysadmins to do backups :)

The upgrade went really smoothly. I am suitably impressed with the documentation and the fact that it “just worked”! Also I noted that they provide upgrade scripts from the last 6 versions to the latest version. That is really good as not everyone bothers to keep up to date and it would be a real issue if you had to upgrade to each version in turn in order to get to the latest version. A lot of software could learn from this.

Our chain has broken for our house move :( The buyer at the bottom has pulled out so the lady buying our house now has to find someone else to buy her place before she can buy our place.

We had high hopes of moving next week and I’m gutted.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

Happy Birthday Jason… my present will avilable at the bar of the Dog & Bull this evening :)

Gave Jon a treat at breakfast this morning – a second helping of weetabix rather than the toast that I normally give him!

He was chuffed! Isn’t it nice that I can “treat” him with something so simple and it’s not even made of sugar!

Reading, mpt, I found my way to iTnews where Larry Ellison of Oracle is quoted as saying:

“"There is also a new browser, Mozilla, which is Netscape 7 plus bug fixes. It’s not bad,"”

Um… Netscape 7 is based on Mozilla 1… Keep up at the back, Larry!

I’m in the process of getting a new car. Well, when I say new, I mean new to me!

The current car is a J-Reg Peugeot 405 1.6 petrol. Nice enough car – not especially quick off the blocks, but sits on the motorway quite happily. Sitting on the motorway is something I do a lot of and when we’ve moved, I’ll be commuting 40 miles each way to and from work. As a result I’m thinking that I need a more fuel efficient car – i.e. a diesel…

That’s not really a problem, you would think – just pop into a used car dealership and buy one! Hmm… diesel cars are rarer than I thought as I found out last Saturday when I traweled round a lot of car dealers in Croydon.

This week, things look a bit more hopeful. A little bit of work with autotrader has resulted in 4 possibilities of which I have phoned 2 to ensure that they are still on the forecourt. The problem now is finding the time to actually go and see them as wmute‘s over tomorrow and my parents are here Sunday…

I live away from home 4 days a week at the moment and I’ve noticed that my diet during these days has become bland. I suppose it’s because I’m not particularly interested in cooking just for myself… That’s right I’m eating ready meals!

I’ve discovered that Tesco will sell you 3 meals for a fiver, so you can tell that I’m not going for top notch quality here :) Iterestingly I seem to go for the one’s with rice – sweet and sour, chicken and mushroom, Thai chicken, etc.

The food’s OK.. the beer that I have with it is better!