In Uncategorized on January 24, 2002
(€). there are other things that you can do too. i get the euro symbol in netscape 6 and the abbreviation “EUR” in netscape 4.
what’s not clear to me as of yet is whether it’s correct to write prices as €5.99 or 5.99€. both seem to be in use. using the currency symbol as a prefix seems more logical as that’s what we do with $ and £ though it’s not what was done with all the old european currencies.
update: the european central bank’s euro information site is using the euro symbol and the EUR abbreviation as a prefix. that’s definitive enough for me.
In Uncategorized on January 24, 2002
on visiting the bbc homepage this morning i wondered what the hell a bums bonanza was. bum being a very un-bbc word. it took me a moment to work out it was a badly kerned web font (all web fonts are badly kerned – one day css will solve this i hope) and the cause of celebration was robert burns.
In Uncategorized on January 23, 2002
steve wozniak … plans to create new wireless devices to help ”everyday people track everyday things“.
this sounds to me very much like selling computer trackable keyfobs to stop you from losing your keys. i work in a building where we use keyfobs to open magnetic locks and we’ve joked that we’re being tracked from car park to toilet to kitchen to desk. maybe not such a joke after all….
[found via boing boing]
In Uncategorized on January 23, 2002
i think it’s really interesting that john lewis have decided that their own brand name is a more useful online asset than the generic “buy.com”. there was a way of thinking a few years ago that you needed to have a generic sounding domain name to succeed on the web. it’s not true in any other realm and i don’t think it’s ever been true on the web either. i think they just show a lack of imagination myself.
we picked “loquax” out of a latin dictionary when looking for an interesting demon node name and i think the name has worked better for our business than generic names featuring competitions and prizes have for others. somehow it’s just more memorable and has more personality. if we started over again i might try and find a name that was easier to give out over the phone, but i would never waste time or money trying to obtain a generic domain.
the fact that it’s john lewis discovering that generic names aren’t much cop is also interesting because many of their stores only use “a john lewis department store” as a tagline. we have bainbridges, tyrell and green, knight and lee, heelas, george henry lee, peter jones etc. instead.
In Uncategorized on January 23, 2002
the guardian asks if you’re a kidult? for me it’s full of unanswerable questions and “none of the above” is my answer. i’m quite definitely a kidult though as i think being an adult is just a case of being old enough to earn the money to buy your own toys. some of my favourite books were written with a teenage audience in mind and philip pullman has been on my “must try out” author list for quite some time.
In Uncategorized on January 22, 2002
i used to have a sidebar on this main weblog page with comments on all the books i’d read recently. this has now got it’s own booklog page as part of my site revamp.
In Uncategorized on January 22, 2002
camworld comes up with a hideous twist on the aol buying red hat front:
think about how easy it would be for aol to distribute an aol-customized version of linux with an aol-customized version of mozilla (netscape 6) all on a single cd, along with a mail client (an aol-customized version of netscape mail) and aol instant messenger.
though to be fair this could go the other way and be something entirely open and non hideous too, but that’s not the first idea that springs into my mind, i obviously don’t trust aol any more than i trust microsoft.
In Uncategorized on January 22, 2002
the strange new sport of googlewhacking involves trying to find two word combinations that produce only a single result from google. the score is calculated to be the product of the number of hits the words produce when entered individually. the current high score is over 151 billion produced by getting a single hit for “linux anemonefish”.
In books read on January 22, 2002
I've got a new favourite Lydia Chin book though No Colder Place, narrated by Bill Smith, is still my favourite book in this series. I also think I can't hold on a year to read the next installment and might have to move Rozan onto my "must buy in hardback" list.
I've always liked the setting of New York's Chinatown and setting a book in Hong Kong means that the author can expand the descriptions and make everything so much bigger. The descriptive parts are very well woven into the narrative, it's not like you get pages of scenery in between the action scenes. You really get drawn into the skyscrapers, the alley ways, the apartment blocks, the harbours, the markets and the temples. Hong Kong is a place I'd love to visit.
I'm still thinking about the plot. It all makes sense to me except for quite why Lydia and Bill ended up in Hong Kong to start with. I haven't quite got why their services were chosen sussed yet. One of the things I like about Rozan is that she doesn't go in for the big good versus evil battle. Most of her baddies are acting in the interests of the good. Her characters are mainly trying to help out their families, keep bad news from their friends, that kind of thing, when they get drawn in by currents too strong to escape. The multilayered plots all stand up to analysis and aren't merely puzzles arranged about a central focus of evil.
I really enjoyed the ending of this book. The will they/won't they relationship between Lydia and Bill could become wearing after so many episodes but Rozan is subtly developing her main characters without ruining the series. I'm looking forward to the next book, Winter and Night.
Purchased on 16th January 2002.
In Uncategorized on January 21, 2002
i think i’m happy with the look of my redesign now. i’ve discovered an excellent series of articles at a list apart that explain, among many other things, that pixels are currently the only unit you should use to define your css font sizes. if you want the sizes to be reliably cross platform and cross browser that is. i’m now happy with the layout in NS6, IE5, Op5 and even NS4 doesn’t screw stuff up to badly. i’m impressed with myself.
nocto