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April 2005

Best Domain Name Ever.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 30 Apr 2005 at 19:07

ChatZilla Status

  • Checked in: Followup to Bug 287687 (ChatZilla should not hardcode "Mozilla" as the suite name) - fix pref window bustage
  • Awaiting review: Bug 291504 - sync-output and focus-input should not have CMD_CONSOLE set, raw can do without CMD_NEED_SRV
  • Awaiting review: Bug 273507 - Add 'set me as being /away' to [some] context menu [already fixed in 0.9.68a]
  • Awaiting review: Bug 207195 - cannot hide joins/parts in chat window [conference mode]
  • Notable: Bug 292126 - Use "legal" version numbers [Chatzilla versions containing letters (eg., 0.9.68a) will not work in Firefox 1.1.]
  • Open ChatZilla bugs: 157

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 29 Apr 2005 at 17:27

The big five-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Firefox just hit fifty million downloads. Fucking amazing.

Scott Kveton has also posted Firefox and Thunderbird download graphs.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 29 Apr 2005 at 17:06

RealNetworks doesn't get it

Slashdot: RealNetworks Invests in Legitimizing Free Music. Their chairman says:

By having a free service that is legal, it flattens the issue of 'Why use an illegal service?'

Well, lets see... you have to be in the USA, you can't put anything on your portable player, you're limited to 25 songs. Hardly "flattens" the issue.

The word "song" doesn't even mean what you thought it did: you listen to one song 25 times, your quota's gone. From real.com:

...the Digital Music Revolution brings you: * Hours of free music every month...

Yes. About 2 hours. Like it or not, after two hours most people will go back to Kazaa. And...

Because RealNetworks must pay an undisclosed licensing fee every time a song is played, even if it is free, the company is turning to ads from Chrysler and an arrangement making Google Inc.'s search toolbar an optional download with Rhapsody.

Adware from Real? Why am I not surprised?

iRATE, music podcasting, legal torrents. Meh.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 27 Apr 2005 at 20:58

Kennedy Campaign: Podcast!

The official Liberal Democrat Battlebus Blog has started a podcast (XML).

I said before that the blog was a Good Thing, but I honestly didn't expect a podcast. Wow.

(On an unrelated note, DeadBrain beat me to the "Don't mention the war" reference I was trying to work out.)

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 25 Apr 2005 at 19:57

How not to make backups

My Computer crashed, and managed to corrupt the registry. So Windows wouldn't boot. Luckily, I had a live Linux CD, so I could boot and search the web. KB307545 contained lots of useful information. I could use the recovery console to boot Windows and then use System Restore, but...

The current system configuration is not aware of the previous restore points. You must have a previous copy of the registry from a previous restore point to make the previous restore points available again.

WTF? System Restore, the number one most useful tool for fixing registry problems, requires the registry to operate? That's just fucking silly.

(Incidentally, I gave up and decided to back up my stuff and format. Meh.)

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 24 Apr 2005 at 17:31

Suck Fony: Beatallica returns on May 6th

It seems things are finally sorted out, and beatallica.org will be back in just under two weeks.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 23 Apr 2005 at 16:21

ChatZilla Status

Fixes are being checked in for what will become 0.9.69.

  • Fixed: 7 bugs that were already fixed in 0.9.68.
  • Fixed: Bug 287687 - ChatZilla should not hardcode "Mozilla" as the suite name
  • Fixed: Bug 289275 - After about an hour of using Chatzilla it slows downand is hard to close. At this time my system is still running fine.
  • Fixed: Bug 290626 - ctcp time mangles some localised date formats
  • Fixed: Bug 290732 - Chatzilla should support CTCP source
  • Fixed: Bug 291149 - Events don't have a msg property set, making them hard to match in hook patterns
  • Fixed: Bug 278746 - Auto Connect doesn't handle servers, only networks
  • Awaiting review: Bug 272882 - Firefox doesn't exit properly with ChatZilla [command line parameter problem]
  • Open ChatZilla bugs: 151

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 22 Apr 2005 at 18:29

iPodder database borked

It probably wasn't iPodder's fault it got corrupted, but it could have found a better error message than "cPickle.UnpicklingError: invalid load key".

It doesn't matter, anyway. It "backs up" subscriptions to favourites.txt so I didn't really lose anything except a 9 megabyte database file. And bit of bandwidth when it downloaded something twice, but meh...

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 22 Apr 2005 at 18:00

John Edwards is podcasting

John Edwards is speaking about politics, family, and his Diet Coke addiction.

Imagine if podcasting is still around in four years. Imagine John Edwards keeps it up. Imagine the speculation comes true, and he stands for president. The leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world, podcasting. It could happen.

This country doesn't quite get it yet. Some guy on a battlebus with a blog is a good start. The Boris Johnson blog, with a distinct lack of posts actually written by Boris is not good enough.

Random thought - why do parties pick old candidates, when younger candidates have fewer things from their past to dig up?

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 21 Apr 2005 at 22:20

Random Nerd Notes

I'm trying to work out what I want for the next version of RdMise. I'll call it 0.9 whilst I'm working on it, and figure out a new version number later. Random points follow.

  • Templates for page layout - changing content in bottom bar, adding extra links, search box, CSS hooks, etc. without wading through PHP.
  • New app interface - only attempt to use compatible apps, produce system info page for debugging.
  • RdCode enhancements - non-generic error messages, broadcast, integration with templates/blog posts.
  • Possible moving of RdPress code (eg. RSS) to RdMise so all apps can use it.
  • Full comment/trackback moderation - "quarantine" system for potentially dodgy comments, more configurable filters.
  • Save as draft for RdPress - look into autosave.
  • Ongoing sub-standards compliance.
  • Decide whether it's worth doing a full user system.

I'm not putting much work into RdPict at the moment, but when I do it'll probably be in three stages:

  • 0.2 - Update to work with new RdMise, implement all features of Comix with database compatability, include full admin and RSS feeds.
  • 0.4 - Re-arrange database, support downloads and custom thumbnails, add RSS enclosures, look at doing templates.
  • 0.6 - (Possibly) comments and trackback, no duplicated (with RdPress) code if possible.

The (RSS, comments, trackback, admin) stuff that all apps need will either go into RdMise or become (yet) another optional component.

I am going to make a feed reader. Sometime. Eventually. Maybe.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 20 Apr 2005 at 21:58

It's done.

Yep, it's called 0.8 now. There's an Internet Explorer-only stylesheet (again), which makes the forms a lot less ugly. I found a CSS Editor for IE that made things less painful.

I'll post later about what I want to do next.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 20 Apr 2005 at 08:26

I'm backing the bid...

Heh.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 17 Apr 2005 at 18:33

ChatZilla Status

ChatZilla 0.9.68a was released to fix minor bugs with some themes.

  • Patch in progress: Bug 287687 - ChatZilla should not hardcode "Mozilla" as the suite name
  • Approved patch: Bug 289275 - After about an hour of using Chatzilla it slows downand is hard to close. At this time my system is still running fine.
  • Fixed in CVS: Bug 286999 - Exception calling xulSortService.sort()
  • Patch in progress: Bug 283521 - Add security icon/button to the Chatzilla status bar.
  • Approved patch: Bug 290626 - ctcp time mangles some localised date formats
  • Open ChatZilla bugs (not including 0.9.68a fixes): 160

Most fixes are not checked in to CVS due to the Gecko 1.8b2 freeze. In other news, ChatZilla is working with XULRunner on Linux and Windows. Watch the Support Boards for a semi-official release.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 17 Apr 2005 at 12:21

DeadBrain: Conservative Manifesto Released

More cakes. Cleaner hands. Lower skirts. Others coming soon.

Attachment: conservative.pdf / 0.44MB / application/pdf

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 15 Apr 2005 at 22:31

More RdMise/0.8 Stuff

I've being messing around too much with this version. It needs a few more things, then it needs an even version number. Possibly:

  • Blogidate needs integrating. (→ done)
  • I want "save as draft" for RdPress. (→ future)
  • Some slightly better content negotiation stuff, possibly changing the DTD for stubborn browsers. (→ future)
  • Possibly limit attachments to 1, or give a warning if more are added. (→ future)
  • Slight Feedback UI changes. (→ done)
  • Do the current trackback URLs make sense? I might change them to see if it affects spam. (→ future)
  • Fix the search box so it's slightly less of a hack.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 13 Apr 2005 at 21:54

SVG in Firefox 1.1?

Bug 122092 is marked as blocking Gecko 1.8b2, the technology that the first Firefox 1.1 previews will be based on.

There's confusion over whether lovely shiny scalable graphics will be on by default.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 13 Apr 2005 at 21:33

Who Should You Vote For?

An interesting quiz. Teenagers, criminals, and teenage criminals don't get a vote, so here goes nothing:

  • Labour -30
  • Conservative -21
  • Liberal Democrat 50
  • UK Independence Party 12
  • Green 49

I'm surprised - and slightly embarrassed - with the positive UKIP number, but it's fairly small and inaccurate because UKIP don't actually have policies on many issues. The Green number doesn't surprise me much, since they just seem to be an extremist version of the Lib Dems.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 13 Apr 2005 at 20:45

M3 arrived!

Can't talk, filling...

USB1 sucks.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 11 Apr 2005 at 20:52

ChatZilla 0.9.68 released!

ChatZilla 0.9.68 has been released as an extension for Mozilla Suite 1.0+ and Firefox 0.9+.

It has lots of fixes, but is not checked in to CVS yet.

Current bug status:

  • Awaiting review: Bug 287687 - ChatZilla should not hardcode "Mozilla" as the suite name
  • Awaiting review: Bug 289275 - After about an hour of using Chatzilla it slows downand is hard to close. At this time my system is still running fine.
  • Patch in progress: Bug 283521 - Add security icon/button to the Chatzilla status bar.
  • Open ChatZilla bugs (not including 0.9.68 fixes): 164

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 10 Apr 2005 at 15:49

You people scare me

Quoth the raw log: 84.67.244.19 - - [07/Apr/2005:06:40:25 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 302 388 "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Charles+and+Camilla+Tshirt &btnG=Search&meta=" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"

Seriously, why? What the hell is wrong with this species?

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 10 Apr 2005 at 14:49

Random Links Digest

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 08 Apr 2005 at 22:34

"Where's my iAUDIO?", continued...

Fools. They tried to deliver it to a business address when everybody had gone home. Meh, I'll pick it up tomorrow.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 08 Apr 2005 at 20:21

I need to sort out IE support

I'm writing this post in Internet Explorer 5, and it's not pretty. IE users aren't a majority of my visitors, so I'm not going to spend ages on it, but it'd be nice to have the logo on the right side of the screen.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 08 Apr 2005 at 11:20

ChatZilla Status

Changes since 30th March:

  • Patch in progress: Bug 287687 - ChatZilla should not hardcode "Mozilla" as the suite name
  • Awaiting review: Bug 289275 - After about an hour of using Chatzilla it slows downand is hard to close. At this time my system is still running fine.
  • Open ChatZilla bugs: 164

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 07 Apr 2005 at 19:22

Better late than nevar...

WOOYAY!

Delivery #1: Dispatching Soon

We are preparing these items for dispatch and this part of your order cannot be cancelled or changed.

Umm, that's fine by me, I'm getting an M3. For music you see. Tiddly-dee. Whee.

Ahem.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 06 Apr 2005 at 22:29

The Past Two Weeks of (UK) TV News

I'd like to add the following to Adam Felber's post on TV news:

PRINCE CHARLES IS GETTING MARRIED TO CAMILLA! SHE'S GOING TO BE QUEEN! SHE CAN'T BE QUEEN BECAUSE OF DIANA AND STUFF AND, WELL, WE DON'T LIKE HER! Leaked documents show the Attorney-General changed his legal advice after failing to get a UN resolution, and WHEN IS TONY GOING TO ANNOUNCE THE ELECTION DATE OF MAY THE FIFTH? WHEN WILL HE ANNOUNCE WHEN HE'S GOING TO ANNOUNCE IT? LET'S ASK LOVELY WOBBLY ANDREW MARR... HE DOESN'T KNOW! The EU has agreed it's okay to sell weapons to China. WEDDING WEDDING WEDDING! THE QUEEN MIGHT NOT BE COMING, AND EVEN IF SHE DOES COME, IT WON'T BE RIGHT BECAUSE SHE'S THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. MICHAEL HOWARD HATES GYPSIES, and he sacked an MP for not agreeing with everything he says, AND HE'S GONNA, LIKE, CUT TAXES!!! HE'S ALSO GOING TO THE WEDDING THAT'S NOT A WEDDING BUT JUST A CHURCH BLESSING THAT LOOKS LIKE A WEDDING. SHE CAN'T BE QUEEN! THOUGH SHE WILL BE, BUT NOT REALLY. THE POPE IS DEAD, HERE'S OUR IRISH CORRESPONDENT. HELLO. GOODBYE. Charles Kennedy said something. Nobody listened. TONY BLAIR IS DOING NOTHING OUT OF RESPECT FOR TERRI SCHAIVO, WAIT, I MEAN THE POPE! HE'S A GOOD CHRISTIAN, NOT A CATHOLIC BUT HIS WIFE IS SO IT COUNTS. JAMIE OLIVER IS A CHEF. THIRTY-SEVEN PENCE. POPE! DOCTOR WHO IS DEAD, I MEAN, HE QUIT! TRAITOR. WEDDING! WITNESSES ANNOUNCED! PRINCE WILLIAM ISN'T GETTING MARRIED! PRINCE CHARLES SECRETLY ADMITS TO HATING THE MEDIA. The country quietly agrees.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 05 Apr 2005 at 22:04

43 Things adds similar goal highlighting, singlehandedly reverses direction of entropy

Thank you letting us know about this identical goal. The world is now a little more organized.

Bah! I knew it was good, but breaking the laws of thermodynamics is a bit much.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 03 Apr 2005 at 22:27

Feed URLs changed, etc.

I changed the feed addresses so that the main feed is http://rdmsoft.com/r/blog/rss2.xml and the tag feeds are http://rdmsoft.com/r/blog/tag/tagnamehere.rss2.xml. This hopefully makes more sense, and keeps the feeds out of the /blog/rdpress folder (because I'm banning robots from there, and I still want to let stuff access my feed).

I also fixed up the logo, and added a background image for the normal top bar. The music has had a minor update.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 03 Apr 2005 at 21:40

New random term - podlag

Podlag, noun: The interval between the time a podcast is downloaded and the time it is listened to.

What? I'm bored.

Link / / Tags: None. / Posted on 03 Apr 2005 at 20:44

Code Is Poetry

Note from the future: "make a tshirt" used to link to somebody's cafepress store with a WordPress spam code shirt.

Div Style: Text Indent,
Minus Nine Thousand Pixels;
Overflow, Hidden.

Sorry, couldn't resist. At least I didn't make a tshirt.

Confused? Go here.

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 01 Apr 2005 at 12:15

Search engines rock.

Apparently not a joke: my Gmail storage limit is at 1180MB. Edit: 1183MB, counting...

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 01 Apr 2005 at 10:39

For immediate release - rdmsoft announces RdFenestrate

(Yorkshire, UK) In a hastily-arranged press conference on a hill in the middle of Beverley Westwood, rdmsoft CEO R. Marshall today announced the launch of a new product. He claims that "RdFenestrate will revolutionise the way parts of the web interact". A public release is scheduled for "Real Soon Now", otherwise known as "December 2008".

Lead developer Robert M. says the technology is built upon a highly stable base. "We decided to write RdFenestrate in the Beatnik language, which will enable us to avoid delivering a release early." When asked to say exactly what the final product would do, he wasn't sure. "We like to change the target featureset every few days to avoid boredom, though at the moment it's an RSS feed parser. It retrieves data in XML format from a wide variety of sources and analyses the text. A central server then decides who most deserves to be thrown out of a window, and makes arrangements for the operation to take place."

Head of QA, "Bob", was heard to remark: "testing is painful.".

Link / / Tags: / Posted on 01 Apr 2005 at 01:21

tH