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Well, had my new car for three nights, which is all good in its own right, but . . .

. . . Thursday night, some idiots decided to smash the window!

Yea, you read it right. They smashed the driver side window!!!

No idea as to why, nothing was missing (nothing was actually in the car though). I guess they thought they could have it due to the key locks on the outside, but there are no buttons inside to unlock the doors as it has central locking.

Only way to get in is climb through the window or jimmy the door.

Cost me £40 for a replacement, although Autoglass wanted £240. Shocking. Scrapyards are now swexi!

I could physically scream at Vista right now.

I’m hard at work on the new design for my new website, name yet to be disclosed, and have the files scattered across three separate locations, my XP desktop; my external hard disk; and one of my memory pens.

When I first transferred the files over to my laptop to do a little cross-browser-testing it took me for ever to get Firefox 3.0 to even open the .html file. I had to fight the system to finally run it, and I can’t remember how I did but it worked fine. I.E 7 worked fine from the start. Pshh, typical.

The initial tests proved positive, with everything looking good across five browsers, which is always a good sign this early on.

Howeverrrr, and that’s a long; drawn out howeverrrr, today I decided to plug in the external disk to watch a movie on tv through my Xbox, fiasco posted below this one; listen to a bit of music since the laptop has none, which is now being streamed through my tv, cool huh?; and do a little more browser testing now everything has changed substantially.

Or so I thought. (That seems to be the pattern with me and technology, something never goes as straight forward as it should).

For some reason the external disk has read-only protection on the files, which I can remove but doesn’t help anything. For some daft reason, when I try to save the files Vista starts to cry about not being able to locate it. Yea, got me confused as well. I can’t even save the file as a fresh one as it can’t find the folder. Umm, it’s kind of open with this file in it.

This is where XP beats Vista for usability. Vista has the looks but that’s just a mac in a funny jumper.

*Considers formatting fully to Kubuntu* .. or buying a mac book thing!

Apart from all of these Vista issues the new design’s coming along well, it’s only a simple one with a nice colour and about three images, one of which is an icon.

I’m happy to say the design currently works on the current settings:

• Firefox 2 under Windows XP (sp2 & sp3), at 1024×768
• Opera 9.5 under Windows XP (sp3), at 1024×768
• IE6 under Windows XP (sp2 & sp3), at 1024×768
• Firefox 3 under Windows Vista (sp1), at 1280×800
• IE7 under Windows Vista (sp1), at 1280×800

Still to be Tested:

• Firefox 3 under Ubuntu & Kubuntu 8.04, at 1280×800
• Konquror under Kubuntu 8.04, at 1280×800

I would like to point out that if you use anything below I.E 6 it will not be supported. No exceptions! Simply upgrade to the latest stable release of I.E and everything will work as it should. I recommend I.E 7 though, 8 is still a beta so may possibly be buggy.

Over the next few weeks I shall continue to work on the designs, as well as the Windows Live Messenger skins I am making. There is a Ubuntu Live Messenger skin available for beta testing over at the forums, so get over there; download it; test it; give ideas for it; and help squish bugs.

Look out for more news soon.

I was browsing through Google Analytics earlier and noticed a site linking to me. Being curious I checked it out.

It turned out that the footer section off some of my InvisionFree skins was being used by this forum. Now generally this wouldn’t be a problem but the theme isn’t mine, but the designed by says it is.

I can only think they liked my customisation of the footer as to why it’s being used, however, it doesn’t work how I designed it due to the stylesheet not being mine. This means the relevant line of code is missing, so the footer looks wrong.

On top of this, while viewing the source I noticed they’re using my Three Piece Main Title code, to which the copyright has been replaced but the link to here remains. Work that out.

I have sent out an email to request my name be removed from the design, out of respect for the original authors; and my name be re-added to the code copyright. We’ll see how things go.

Well what an eventful week. I shall be writing a series of entries over the next two days about everything that has happened.

Topic five: Hospitality.

OMG! I just found out earlier tonight that my mam is going to hospital.

She has some sort of problem with her eyes, like a cyst or something. I’m always last to know everything, and I wouldn’t of found out if I never phoned.

I would go with her but need to wait for my laptop if it arrives tomorrow, and not over the weekend.

I now have to put up with my sister for 10 minuets before she goes to school, then I get to play with teh kittehs all day.

Thinking about it, I haven’t been round for a while. I haven’t been to my grandma’s either. I’ll have to go sometime.

Well what an eventful week. I shall be writing a series of entries over the next two days about everything that has happened.

Fourth topic: Employment attempt.

For the past five days I have been trying to contact a potential new employer about a cooking job.

This employer doesn’t seem to know what callback means. I was informed last Saturday (31/05/08) that he would ring me on Monday (02/06/08), Monday was a busy one for me.

Having received no phone calls I rang back a day or two later, to which I was again informed he would contact me. It’s now Thursday night, and no-one has rung me.

I’ll contact them again tomorrow and state I would like to apply for the job and can they send me an application form. That way at least I can get something in instead of trying to speak with someone who doesn’t want to speak with me to ask the same question.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.

I have finally managed to contact the police today, about my stolen laptop.

Having walked round to the station I was given a number to call, which turned out to be lost property. So I was connected back to the switchboard, which confused me since I hadn’t been there in the first place; repeated myself to the woman; was practically cut off without any word; began shouting hello a few times until a gruff voice came on and said “hello police, hello police” to which I replied “hello, I want to report a laptop stolen!”.

We then went through the details, name; date of birth; address; phone number; etc, to which I was informed I would have an officer sent round. In less than one hour later she turned up, which was a great response time.
We discussed what had happened; I gave a description of the laptop; and filled out a statement.

I’m wary of whether anything will be found, as it’s hard to recover stolen goods unless someone jumps around screaming “I have it”. Dell are investigating, after the initial fiasco of stating it was missing, and the delivery company have yet to respond to me. I bet the driver kept it.

I have an appointment with a solicitor tomorrow, so I’ll see how that goes and what advice I get, as well as what Trading Standards have to say since they replied to me this morning to confirm my address, as they’re not insured to advise people out of the area.

So things are on the up today, can’t say how long it will last though.

It’s now 45 minuets past midnight here in the dull uk; I’m slightly frustrated; extremely tired; and I only have one contact!

I spent the greater part of yesterday trying to sign up for a new windows live account, with the sole purpose of cleaning out my old accounts contact list. “open the hotmail bookmark, click the sign up button, fill out the information, and I’ll be done before the kettle’s boiled” I thought, oh no, I was waaaaaaaaayy wrong!

Firstly, clicking the signup button took me to the st00pid download page to download the even st00pider installer that I already have. Ok, so off we go to the msn site to complete my quest that way, nope! There is no longer the “quick, come and sign up for a .co.uk address” link anywhere I could see.

Being English you just have to have the sexier .co.uk domain!

Once again off I go through trusty old Google to find a link, and finding one that resembles a sign up page I proceed to sit upright; flex my fingers; and notice there is only the .com domain available. Changing the country never made a difference to the options neither. Not good enough!!

Through the middle of this hunt for the unfindable page I decided to delete both windows live id’s and set up a gmail account, as I don’t have one and I want one so there. Well, apparently due to issues with other companies registering the gmail.com domain Google can’t use it over here and have to use @googlemail.com instead. Now @gmail.com certainly looks better than @googlemail.com, so off I go again to search out some information, and read up that it’s possible with proxies, to get the gmail version.

Meanwhile, through some sheer luck and Google hammering I stumble across the very Microsoft page I’m looking for. The signup page that allows me to have a shiny new @hotmail.co.uk email address. Just looking at this page tells me that it hasn’t been updated since before windows live rolled out which lead me to guess the .co.uk isn’t as important as it should be. Considering you can still use it why isn’t it selectable via the new sign up page.

Back to googlemail, I decided to stick to the longer version as I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of new accounts any longer. After the initial “you missed this box so we’ll reload the page just to annoy you” malarkey I had myself a new email account to forward all my junk too, yayy! I then proceeded to change all my email addresses wherever I normally log in to, which didn’t seem to take too long . . .

Having found my new best page ever I chose my new @hotmail.co.uk address, that was instantly available because I’m just so cool, and began filling in the required information. Clicking on the accept button, the page loads, the page still loads, the page still loads some more, and then it re-loads. I’m now back on the same page with empty fields! Panic arises at this moment, is it not possible to have my new account .. I don’t believe you! So, once again I fill everything out; gently click the accept button; and wait.

Relief flows through me as I read the next page telling me I can now sign in to my new account.

Having spent four hours to complete something that should only take a few minuets I now have something else to add to the “Microsoft sucks list”.

If anyone out there wishes to have a sexy .co.uk address I’ll make it easier for you, If only it was that easy for me.

Well I’m still after a notebook computer (laptop) and decided to contact Dell to see what they could do for me after noticing the Inspiron 6400 was no longer available with good old trusty Ubuntu.

This is the chat I had:

• tony ichirō: Basically I’m looking to purchase a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. Is there any chance I can have one built?
• Agent: Thank you for contacting Dell Sales Chat. This is Agent, your Sales Advisor. Please give me a moment while I review your query.
• tony ichirō: Do note I’m not after the xps.
• Agent: I understand that.
• Agent: Please give me a moment.
• Agent: I am afraid, only one Laptop is available with Ubuntu
• Agent: and that is XPS 1330.
• Agent: with 13.3″ screen
• Agent: and the Price range starts from £579 Inc VAT and shipping.
• tony ichirō: I would like to query if it’s at all possible for Dell to build me one to my specifications?
• tony ichirō: .. as that is what they do no? Build machines?
• Agent: sure i can try my best to do that.
• Agent: if you can tell me what would you need with the Laptop, then i can configure and let you know about that Laptop.
• tony ichirō: Firstly would it be possible to have Ubuntu as the Op system?
• Agent: only XPS 1330 is available with Ubuntu.
• tony ichirō: Why is that?
• Agent: That is only Laptop available with Ubuntu.
• tony ichirō: Is there an email address I can contact?
• Agent: Regarding what ?
• tony ichirō: The subject matter we are discussing.
• Agent: i am afraid we do not have any Email address, where you can discuss about that.
• tony ichirō: So to clarify .. there is absolutely no possible way Dell can build me a machine to the way I would like?
• Agent: its all about Demand.
• tony ichirō: This is demand.
• tony ichirō:
• Agent: Most of the UK customer choose Vista, not Ubuntu
• tony ichirō: News flash .. vista sucks
• tony ichirō: :p
• Agent: i am afraid, but that is a wrong information.
• Agent: Vista is the best operating system than any other operating system.
• tony ichirō: Do you work for Dell or Microsoft here?
• Agent: I am sorry, but i work for Dell, however its the decision of Dell to offer which Laptop with Ubuntu and that is on Demand.
• tony ichirō: Ubuntu is on demand I know.
• Agent: I know, but not more than Vista.
• tony ichirō: Because it’s shipped as standard .. most people don’t realise they have free choice!
• Agent: I am afraid, only XPS 1330 is available with Ubuntu.
• Agent: if you wish i can explain you about that.
• tony ichirō: I’d prefer not to format to Ubuntu in case of an issue that Dell would then say my warranty is void.
• tony ichirō: I asked why that was before so yes, please explain.
• Agent: I will send you the link of that Laptop, so that you can take a look at it
• Agent: Agent pushes page, [link]
• tony ichirō: I stated at the beginning of this chat that I wasn’t after the XPS!
• Agent: Please click on the link and then take a look at the configuration.
• Agent: you can also customise it.
• tony ichirō: To something a little over my budget.
• Agent: and i have also mentioned, that is the only laptop which is available with Ubuntu.
• System: Agent has left this session!
• System: The session has ended!

Well they certainly don’t like to be corrected. Having stated I wasn’t looking for the XPS they preceded to “sell” it to me.

I would prefer not to have the trouble of formatting in case something goes wrong, and I would also have another XP license laying around, which is a waste of good storage space.

Dare say I’ll see what comes up, or maybe contact PC World. I need to find a decent machine though!

What don’t the bank understand? I DOES NOT WANTS A CREDIT CARD!!11!!11!1

Is there anything difficult about that? No, exactly. So can someone explain to me why I keep getting application forms for st00pid credit cards.

I had the thought last time to send a note back to them saying “go away” in the rudest possible manor ..but decided against it as they would probably sign me up to the most interest filled card they could create.

Grrr, do they not partake in recycling and saving trees.

Well I would say it’s official but anything Microsoft related has been for a good few years now .. content inside tables, inside divs, inside tables, inside divs, inside internet explorer 6 severely suck!

I’m talking about the skin I currently have in production for InvisionFree. The effect I have includes nice little corners around the content boxes and the main page. Explorer doesn’t like this when I add a little bit of padding to make it all look nicer. Having spent some time adding everything inside another table and stuffing widths on them the effect sort of works correctly, or is livable for those st00pid enough to actually use a Microsoft browser. However, now that one thing works something else breaks, well it isn’t actually broke, just to wide in some places.

I’m considering taking a few leaves off of the Microsoft tree and releasing the skin half finished; un-viewable within their own product. But that isn’t fare to the poor people unable to download a decent browser.

I dare say the whole issue will be solvable but I’m just worn out. I’ve considered removing the nice effect and having the skin standard. Either that or attempt a different method to get the same effect. Yea, that sounds good.

Next weeks news: An unknown male; about 22, was found breaking into peoples homes and removing a piece of software from peoples computers. When questioned by police as to why, he simply stated “because I care”.

Update to this: I have now managed to produce the same effect I was after in a different way, using st00pid tabhulz0rz!!11!11 .. As I’m going to be unavailable next week both of the skins won’t be finished until the second week of November .. hopefully.