Weblog Quotes

Heh. I came across this video during my web crawling tonight:

Me; Me; Me; Ben; Ben; Ben; Me; Me; Me; Me; Me; Me; Me; Me; Me; Ben; Me; Me; Me; Me.

That’s the current status of Planet ZB. ¹

Ha!

Although I must say, Ben’s postings out-way mine in every aspect; except awesomeness.

Ooo, Ben! If you appear; can you change my avatar link?

1: Everyone else needs to start randomly posting rubbish on web-logs again.

Over the weekend, I spent a few hours jiggling files about for the main website and projects area, which allows for easier management on my part.

Whilst I was doing this, I made a small number of changes to some of the files; which meant I had to up-date the tabindex attribute on most of the links. Ever since I began using them I have hated them. They are nothing but a pain in the rear to organise. Every time I add a link into the middle of others, the tabindex below has to be increased to avoid conflict. For some reason, I end up needing to add new links every now and then.

I do have an idea on how to avoid this level of up-dating, but it’s finding the motivation to edit the damn things again.

Also, if anyone knows of a way php can be used to auto-magically increment the number every time a tabindex attribute is found throughout a page, let me know! I had tried to do this some time ago, but failed. It would be nice to be able to use that idea instead.

As some of you may know, I have been scouring the on-line world for better car insurance quotes now that my policy is drawing to a close.

During this time, I used the three main comparison websites to narrow down my search. Now, for many people, these websites can be useful; as there renewal price is a couple of hundred pounds, or even less.

But for those of us (un-?)fortunate to be freshies, quotes are hitting above £700 or even over £1000. Some people are smart when it comes to saving a bit of money; but some people aren’t.

Whether you know or not, what you need to realise about these comparison sites, is they use something of a ‘best guess system‘ for some of the details in the forms they are retrieving quotes from. Take, for example, the number of years a named driver has held a licence. On the comparison site, you have a limit of 12+; but on a companies site that limit may be higher. Whether or not that higher limit saves a few pounds is open to experiment; but there are other instances where not every field is set to the correct value.

For those people who click the buy button and input their card details, take a look through the companies form for your next re-newel, either by amending the quote; or go directly to the site and start fresh.

Performing this my-self, the quote I received from the comparison sites was over £994. Using the companies site directly, the quote was under £799. Amending the quote from the comparison gave me a quote under £793, saving £4..ish ¹.

So as you can see, I saved £200 just checking details. And this includes an incident; zero no-claims; licence for less than a year; on comprehensive cover, with a named driver and £150 voluntary excess.

It’s a shame I only have less than £5 in my account.

So now you know, if you didn’t already. Amend your quotes!

If you have anything to add to this entry, leave a comment below.

¹ Maybe this is because I went back to the quote after a few days. It would need experimentation.

I have thus-far spent the past several hours reading through a handful of topics over at HNZ, in order to understand how the role playing game is played, and I’m more confused about what to do than how I feel after I’ve just woken up.

Okay, so maybe I didn’t have any sleep last night; and I somehow managed to watch rubbish on T.V until about 7am; and maybe my head hurts too much to actually read anything, but I’m in the mood to find out what an RP is; and how they are played.

/me :glare:’s at Nicolas’ status.

Non of this entry makes any sense.

It seems the sorting process will take place in September. That’s like, a long time away; like, forever!

Oh noes, I over-used the work like. Eeek. /me feels icky inside.

If I join this RP thingeh, I don’t particularly want to participate in an adult role; since I have no character; or back-story; or personal development; or skills; or experience; or .. you see where I’m going with this. I’m thinking starting at the beginning will be largely beneficial to my role playing; and the overall development of my character. Eee, look at me; I’m soo getting into this!

/me requires assistance. /me waits for the on-line sound from Nicolas.

Hopefully Mr Cape Stealer can clear a few items up for me, and I can join in over there. Hopefully.

Just saw this on xkcd: http://xkcd.com/594/

Need I say more.

*/me ducks as all the girls attack him*

*/me needs to implement /me tags*

WordPress:

WordPress is now in the beta stages of 2.8, which should be a nice release. The team has been hard at work again to bring us users a great piece of software. A list of new features can be seen on the codex.

I have somewhat been waiting for the 2.8 release more than the others, but I have no idea why. :/

IP.Board:

A few days ago, the first release candidate for IP.Board 3.0 was released to customers for additional testing and bug finding. Having installed the release to test out features and fixes I’m a little happier with the work put in than I was previously. There is no e.t.a on the final release, but I’m starting to get excited for it, as I will finally be able to update the community forums; since they appear to be a little neglected at this time.

Over the following months I shall attempt to keep up to date with both of the above software’s, and maybe actually give a better opinion on them.

As part of the Zathyus Communities Create a Game contest, I have begun to run a small poker challenge on the support board.

Now, I don’t actually know anything about poker; but this is a learning curve for me, as well as a new challenge; which I thrive upon.

The challenge is only in round one; currently sat at the second round of betting, after the flop. Being run on a forum means there will be delays; issues; slow turns; and other bug type stuff. But all of that is a part of the fun.

I’m not overly sure as to why I started the challenge, I just had the idea, and posted a topic.

Hopefully game play will start to even out as everyone finishes their exams; leaving education forever, of just for the summer. Things should become a lot more interesting as the rounds advance, and I ramp up the cost of the blinds.

You’re welcome to head over and check out the challenge, and who knows; maybe you’ll be playing in the next one.

Two, maybe three days ago I set to work on finishing up/cleaning/updating the main style sheet used within the sites and weblog; since I often became side-tracked by other items and what-not.

Testing the fresher design locally, I was quite pleased with it, aside from one or two minor pieces that I would iron out a day or two later. Or at least I thought, until I updated the lightbox style sheet; and proceeded to upload both that one, and the main style sheet to the live server.

Oops.

Not what I had planned, but oh well; it looks great at the moment and can hold off a week or so for any tweaks I decide to make.

Each of the form elements; text areas, inputs, drop downs, etc have had a makeover; and are better that I thought they would be. It’s nice to have that feeling of accomplishment.

On top of the style sheet updates, I have started to use jQuery to achieve a couple of nice effects; most notably Lightbox and the toggle features available on the Projects pages. As I discover more plug-ins, I shall decide whether it’s worth adding or not; and I may also be using curvy corners in some places soon.

These where part of the minor tweaks I wanted to have finished first, before updating the site.