This is my poky little corner of the Internet. Originally started in 1999 (my website that is, not the Internet) it took on many forms - until 2005, when I lost enthusiasm for my own Internet presence and simply stopped updating it.
This is my attempt at getting some of that enthusiasm back. Enjoy!
I've been told that I change cars more often than some people change their pants, so I thought I'd drop a post on here about my car history over the last 9 years.
I learned to drive in 2002, but failed my first driving test (it was an intensive driving course, all done within a week, and I didn't have enough "on-road" experience to handle all situations, which led to some stupid errors) and couldn't afford to continue with it until 2004, although I kept up private practice with my partner at the time supervising in the snot green 1.0L Nissan Micra that she had.
Although I passed in August 2004, it wasn't until November that I bought my first car. If you want to get technical though, my first car actually arrived 5 years earlier. It was a 1.1L Ford Fiesta Popular Plus bought for me for £50 by my Dad...
As most web developers will know, there's a plethora of tools out there on the Web that can provide What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editing capabilities within web browsers.
My weapon of choice in this arena has always been Xinha - pronounced Xena (like the Warrior Princess) - mainly because the editor itself is very configurable and easily integrates into my custom Content Management platform.
I came across an issue this morning however, where having multiple instances of the Xinha editor on a single web page - with some of the instances initially hidden, caused problems. When the hidden editors were made visible, they didn't work properly - they were frozen and did not respond to mouse or keyboard input.
I've come up with a quick workaround that gets around the problem without requiring much in the way of recoding.
I could wax lyrical here about how terrible Internet Explorer was (and is.)
However, in all honesty, Internet Explorer 9 (and the current release version, IE 10) is so far ahead of it's predecessors that it would be a waste of bandwidth to criticise it extensively. The sooner that those who insist on using IE upgrade to 9/10, the better.
Nevertheless, I found myself having to clear the browser cache in Internet Explorer 9 just the other day. I dutifully brought up the relevant option dialog, seen here:
Oh dear. All of these options - except the first one - require you to tick the box to delete those files from the browser's cache. The first option requires you to tick the box if you want to keep the files.
It could be worse - the first option is separated from the others by a divider, but if you're speed-reading (as I tend to, as I'm sure many others do) there's very little indication that the tickboxes mean different things.
At least there's nothing there that constitutes a disaster if the data is deleted, I suppose.
Over the last few weeks, I've noticed a trend of new "scams" on
Facebook. I've put that in quotes, because I can't really see how the
"scammer" benefits other than getting more likes and shares on their
Facebook pages, but maybe there is some nasty data-sharing going on that
I'm not aware of.
Each one has a similar setup - a picture is
uploaded advertising a new piece of technology, with some cockamamie
excuse as to why said technology is being given away.
When I first started driving, back in 2004, I simply thought of cars as a means of getting from A to B. Sometimes, I yearn for those days - simply because nowadays I tend to change cars more often than I change my pants.
All of the cars pictured above have been owned by me since November 2004, with the exception of the first one which was bought for me by my Dad when I was 17. I never did get to drive it, but given the state of it that may have been a blessing in disguise.
Originally posted: 13th July, 2012
Updated:
23rd March 2013 - added BMW M5, Honda Stepwagon, Mini Cooper S and BMW 7-Series (E65)
Short version:
For those who don't recognise the person on the right, that's Ling Valentine. Owner of www.lingscars.com and famous for her appearance on BBC2's Dragons Den.
As some people may know, I've dabbled in the world of game
development before. I've never been particularly good at it, if I'm
honest, not really down to anything other than a lack of good ideas, and
a lack of time to do any ideas I had justice.
It's something I keep meaning to have another bash at, not in any serious manner of course, just in a "bedroom programmer" kind of way.
Still, I thought I'd make a post about a game of mine that never quite made it past development. It ranks as the most ambitious game project I ever undertook, and actually got quite far down the line.
The year was 2002, and the game was called Arena: Multiplayer Deathmatch and, as the name suggests, it was an Internet/LAN deathmatch game designed for up to 32 players (although I only ever tested it with 4 or 5 before the project kind of fell by the way side.)
No, I'm not talking about switching girlfriends...
For the last year or two I've had a Recaro interior from a Mitsubishi Evo IV in my GT-Four. Well, the front seats anyway - the rear seats were facelifted Celica seats, and my door cards had been falling apart.
So, I took the car to a chap up north called Simon, who does a bit of automotive interior trimming in his spare time, under the banner of Hide 'n' Seat Interiors. I explained what I wanted, and he obliged for a bargain of a price, at least two thirds cheaper than other companies had quoted me.
The list of work was:
Unfortunately, Simon ran clean out of time (after working all through the night) so was unable to do the sunvisors, window switch panels or headlining, but those will be sorted in the near future!
Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Two possibilities exist. Either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
It's always been one of my favourite quotations, so it's rather fitting that it gets a prominent place (right at the start of the intro sequence) to a reimagining of one of my favourite games.
X-COM: UFO Defense (or, to give it its European name, UFO: Enemy Unknown) was developed by the Gollop brothers, Julian and Nick and was released in 1993 by Microprose to an unwitting audience.
