graeme.blog

Category: diary

  • Meh, awake just

    Feels like a long heavy weekend, even though it wasn’t at all for me. Hid out and left the rest of the world to it all. Put the christmas tree up, decked the hall etc. Also learnt what happens to christmas decorations when you vacuum to close to them.

    Big news of the weekend was that there was a massive explosion at a fuel depot in Hemel Hempstead. Probably within about 10 miles or so of my parents. I gave them a call pretty much as soon as I found out, just to check they were okay. To explain, they reckon this was the biggest explosion in peacetime Europe, the blast was heard for 100 miles around, and the smoke and fumes were massive, and were blowing right over them. Anyway, their response was “we didn’t even hear it, we were still pissed from Dad’s christmas do”. Parents, there 🙂

  • I cannot avoid it any longer

    I must start Christmas shopping. I’m normally slightly more organised than this. But I’m not, so I must face the music, and get myself into town tonight for the joy that is late-night shopping.

    Meh, I don’t know what it is, I just haven’t got the Christmas spirit yet this year. I think I will when I’m off work for Christmas, but right now I’m doing work, and I just don’t feel it yet.

  • Odd day

    Couple of strange things thus far today. Have been asked to work on something obscure today that I randomly started reading up on tonight. And was looking through my blog entries for something, and found a couple of pieces of writing (more writing than blog postings) that I didn’t actually remember posting. Not a problem, its stuff I meant to get round to, it was just that I wasn’t aware I had.

  • Firefox Extensions 1.5

    Okay, so as promised, here is a little list of the extensions I use presently for Firefox.

    Del.icio.us
    Del.icio.us is a social bookmark manager. I find it particularly useful when I am researching a project for work, and want to gather all the links together, and be able to access them from several computers (in the course of my normal day, I use four different computers, so perhaps this is more useful to me than most people). This extension helps me post links very quickly, rather than having to cut and paste the url to a page on the del.icio.us site. Incidently, to see my current bookmarks, go to Flotsky’s del.icio.us bookmarks

    FasterFox
    FasterFox is designed to speed up Firefox even more (it is already pretty nifty compated to Internet Explorer), and uses a few tricks to prefetch links on the page you are on. Also has a handy little display on the status bar which shows how long the page has taken to load, and which can also be right-clicked to clear the cache (both of which come in handy for doing web development)

    Fireftp
    Guess what? This is an ftp client for Firefox. I like having several elements of functionality within firefox, so I don’t have to keep opening and closing different applications. I haven’t yet found a good IM client for firefox, but that would sit inside here wonderfully (however I have found a webpage that does, more on that soon). Ideally, I would have two programs open at work, Firefox and Eclipse. I’m actually getting pretty close to having that rigged up, I now do all my sql, html, perl, cgi, version control and a few other things in Eclipse, and can do quite a bit in Firefox. Like ftp.

    Greasemonkey
    Possibly my favourite Firefox extension (yes I have one. yes I am aware this is pretty sad. read the rest of the blog, it isn’t exactly out of character). Uses javascript to modify webpages. That, essentially is it. The beauty is in what can be done using this. There are now thousands of scripts out there, many of which fix issues with popular websites, add functionality, make them look different, or just remove things you don’t need. Absolutely bloody marvellous.

    Adblock
    Does exactly what it says on the tin. Saves loading time, lets you miss out on content you never needed. Wonderful.

    And that will do for now. There are others, and I may well add to this entry over time.

  • A Firefox for the rest of us

    Well, Firefox is now officially version 1.5. The main external differences I’ve noticed so far are:
    – Tabs can now be dragged and swapped with each other
    – The RSS icon is now in the url bar, rather than down the bottom (which threw me at first)
    – Secure pages show in different colours in the url bar. A confirmed, secure site will now have a green background there

    The internals are a lot more important though. The biggest change is updating Firefox itself, which now goes off and finds updates itself, and doesn’t need a new install each time the browser is updates. I think now all my most used extensions are back working, within a few days of the release. Which is not bad, compared to previous experiences. It shows that the Firefox community is working a lot quicker these days for one.

    What I hope to do over the next few days, if I remember, is a series of a few posts detailing the extensions, search plugins, and greasemonkey scripts I’m using at present. Handy guide for me, and maybe even for others.

  • Surreal

    It isn’t often you get to work to find your office wrapped in a 10 foot high purple bow. Well mine is at the moment, and has been since yesterday. We are in the process of rebranding, or “changing to a sans serif font and paying some creatives a lot of money”, as is the trend du jour. Actually, we are possibly one of the last companies to change to a less serifey font. I was pondering this yesterday. What happens when we have all gone sans, will the geniuses of rebranding find some sub-serif font for us all to move to over the next ten years? Move us all back to serif, to give us “an air of authority that exudes from an older, more established font? For the record, I actually like sans-serif fonts, so I’m not annoyed by the change per se, it is more the bollocks that surrounds it. The ribbon was cool mind, will try and post the pic I took of it tomorrow.

  • Warmer

    A little warmer. Just a bit. Not much. And should have had an earlier night. Ah well.

    Not a lot to report today, mulling where to put our Christmas Tree. Possibly not in the house, given the space we have…

  • Colder

    Wow. I know for a fact it is -23848c out there. Still wearing most of my layers indoors whilst I get over the coldness that was my journey to work. How come we can take pictures of distant galaxies, but we can’t heat a bus? Ouch.

    I helped a friend out with her WordPress blog last night. I know it is flexible, I know you can do more with it. I also know how glad I am I do not use it for mine now.

  • Saner

    Well for once in my life I took my own advice, and got a sane nights sleep when it was required. Which is a very good thing.

    During our self-enforced residence on the sofa on Sunday, we watched the latest episode of Lost (OK, remember we are in the UK, and not downloading episodes, so this is the latest to us, I fully appreciate that we are a series behind). It was basically the explanation of how Hurley came to be on the island, and the numbers that had led him there. Best so far.

    I am presently playing Links 2004 on the xbox. Great golf game, very easy and chilled to play, and surprisingly good with some decent rap or drum and bass playing. I can play a round at a fantastic speed with that going.

    Filed in:

  • Wow. Tired.

    Good weekend, now just need to wake up. Out to a gig on Saturday night that was great fun, and resulted in us having a night far too late for our aging bodies, and spending Sunday curled up on the sofa achieving little of consequence, other than recovery and relaxation. Which was quite good actually 🙂

    Now to face the world, bravely, or at least just be there for a bit. Early night tonight. At all costs.