Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

What is Google doing now?? They no longer offer 1GB of storage for their GMail accounts. Sometimes I am amazed by the thinking that must go on there!! No not Infinity+1, its april fools day remember, even though it would be a very good idea! Instead, as they have been running for a year, they are now giving 2GB of storage for every user!! Thanks Google!

They have also integrated Rich Text formatting… at last!!!

I have a number of invitations available if anyone would like one (I am quite sure though that everyone has a Gmail account!)… please leave a comment.

A database to search on the counterparts of MD5 encryption. Although not true reverse engineering, this could be a worry as much as it is genius! By entering any word into the search box you are given the MD5 hash, this is also saved into the website database. If you enter an MD5 string into the search box and it knows the original string it will show you, try entering 9ed1ab4a0967b5b0c02502d7b8b2c68a into the search and you will see why it could be worrying if the database gets big enough. This is thinking outside the box!!

With the 3 new projects I am about to embark on in one sweep, I thought I should get my affairs into order first. As my time developing this site will be restricted for a number of weeks, I decided to fix a couple of CSS and design issues I had. The most challenging thing I finally got fixed was a problem with overlapping floats. If I posted a picture into a small amount of text, it would overlap into the next post and shift the text fouling my layout. I was prompted to take action on this as it was an instant issue on my Videos page! This is now fixed as you can see in the post about the Curta below… the box is the height of the image. I believe that my fix will work in all known browsers which is a plus although I have only tested in Firefox and IE. The step back was when I had made my changes and I cut all the text from the Curta post to try the solution… problem was that I then went and cut & pasted some more code and lost all of the original text… nightmare ! Luckily I was able to write a more concise posting without fear of the image ending up half inside the Tickle-me-Laserjet post!

The other thing I have got around to is the style of the comments which was standard before. As I have just implemented Gravatars into the site… I thought I should sort out the formatting. I am now pleased with the style of this area… leave some comments to try it out!!

This has to be one of the best things I have seen on the net for a while and have to give the guys that put it together a thumbs up! The message you see on the display was sent accross the world so that a script could send it to a printer and then take a picture with a web camera!! If you want to see how these guys have set it up you should look at this page. Alternatively, if you want to tickle the Laserjet yourself… have a go here!

I am currently using the internet at the Dorint Sofitel in Amsterdam. I have just been monitoring my download rates and it is about 300kbs!!! Not bad at all!!!

My webhost UH-Hosting.co.uk has doubled all the resources on their reseller accounts. Now that I have double the webspace, I had better find something to fill it with!! This webhost has been the best I have used to date and think they deserve a pat on the back!

I have decided to call my code plotMe for the time being as it seems a lot more generic and unmarketed as the names I was coming up with previously. I have also added a new category to my Blog!

More progress now. On this version you can click a location and the place you click becomes the location of the spot. Now that I have this functionality it should be fairly easy to get some more dynamic information passed to my code. I think a little tidying up is needed and I need to clean up the maths so that I can use real location figures. That will be one of many steps involved in furthering this project! I need to come up with a new name aswell… any ideas??

Okay so I have been researching and learning about the PHP GD library. I have managed to make a start on my mapping system with a lot of help from various sources on the net and my trusty PHP book. If you are interested in my prototype system have a look here… comments welcome! I have dubbed it GeoCODE but that will need to be reviewed in the future when I get some inspiration!

As I am planning to do some travelling at some point in the future, I was considering how to record the journey for people to read about and allow them to communicate back. The obvious way to do this is via a blog like this one. The next feature I felt that would be great, is if people could see my location on a map. Stories about particular areas could be marked on the map and all could be linked together in a harmony of hyperlinks. As this part is the most challenging to build, I have started to plan out how the location could be stored, how it could be displayed and how it could be updated. All manner of ideas are crossing my mind from using emails, text messages, radio broadcasts and even old fashioned phone calls! The next challenge will be to find a way of displaying these on a map. I have a lot of ideas about this aswell but some good ‘old fashioned’ googling will be needed to look at options. I think this could be an interesting winter project for a couple of years. If you have any ideas for this (Or if it has been done before!) let me know!

It is now 2am and I have just about got everything working. I am aware that it is a little slim on the content side but it will be finished off over the next few days. After hacking the gallery like a lumberjack, I am pleased with the way it turned out… just need to sort the content along with the rest of my site… hope you all like it and enjoy my random images along the top. I will detail my progress from this point on! Good Night!

After about 2 months of constant work, my new design is almost completed. The hardest challenge I have faced on this project is getting the site to display correctly in both IE and Firefox. The other part is actually creating the content to go with the site which, really, is the most important part!! I expect there to be some disruption for maybe an hour two as the change takes place but I am quite sure it will be at some late hour and no-one will notice a thing. Keep your eyes open over the next few days!

An excellent Windows shell extension that allows you to create a storage drive from your Gmail account. You can find further details and download a copy from viksoe.dk. This seems like a great use of that 1GB space that we have!!

Much like my good friend Gringod, I have also had some issues with Dabs.com.

I recently ordered a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard and a Lexar Pro CF card which is needed for my holiday. When I had finished the order, I was informed that the memory card was actually out of stock and wouldn’t be available untill about the time I leave to go to Spain. As the holiday was my primary reason for the purchase, I figured that I had better look for an alternative. Since I was already on the Dabs website, I searched for ‘1GB Compact Flash’ and what should show up? The Lexar Pro 1GB card that I had ordered but with 4 in stock… how could that be? On further investigation, I discovered that Dabs have the same product, with the same manufacturers code on two different Dabs stock numbers and a £15 price difference! Whether this was due to different suppliers, alternative dispatch location or just plain old incompetence I dont know but I immediately sent the support team an email explaining that I am about to go on holiday and that I would like to pay the extra money and get the other memory card! I was sent an automated reply stating that they were bogged down with emails and are not quite up to their usual 4 hour response time… I can cope with a couple of hours over that I suppose!!

To get things in perspective, I am not worried about the difference in price, spending money does not bother me in the slightest and £15 is nothing in the big scheme of things. It is certainly nothing compared to the cost of the holiday and what the emotional cost of not having it would be! I am, however, really annoyed by poor service… I couldn’t even find a phone number on their website… this is supposed to be one of the largest and most respected IT suppliers in the world!!! I want things done promptly and as I choose… isn’t that how all things should be in the Internet-age? </apparent over-expectation> If you do need their phone number… Gringod has posted them, though they dont sound like much use.

At this stage, I discovered that it is possible to add and remove items from your order before it has been sent. So after some experimentation, involving the creation and deletion of a few new orders, I finally managed to delete the old memory card and get the ‘in stock’ version added to my order. Success.. the status changed and the payment was being authorised and a few more Dabs points would be on their way! A day later I received a dispatch confirmation email with a Parcelforce tracking number on it. I then proceeded to watch for 2 days as my parcel moved accross England, over the Channel and into Guernsey where it was promptly delivered to my door!

The final part of this story relates to that email which I sent to Dabs support team 3 days before my Parcel arrived. They sent me a reply stating that all the items were out of stock and that I would have to wait for 11 days before they would be available again! Hmm… had I not taken matters into my own hands… neither of my items would have been available!! I thought about using the keyboard to write a response but in the end… I couldn’t be bothered!!

The above is a panorama made from 12 stitched photos. I went to Vale Castle during my lunch hour to get the shots. Click the image above to see a QT animation of the full thing. Its 2MB so give it some time to load. Worth seeing if you are interested! The challenge is to spot my car (White Honda Integra Type-R)