After the Argos Redesign Debacle, I decided to start a Top Ten Invalid Web Sites, otherwise known as ValiDAQ. As I’m too cheap to register the domain name, you’ll just have to put up with it living under our www address ;) Kathy wonders, perhaps rightly, why I get so worked up about this sort of thing. I think it’s a combination of Web Standards Zealotry, a modicum of expertise in the field in question and a general burning desire to put the world to rights. Read more...

After about two years of ‘Coming Soon’, Argos have finally redesigned their website so that it doesn’t lock out users of Mozilla or any other browsers that use its rendering engine, Gecko. So, is this a victory for Web Standards? Erm, no. A quick peek at the source code reveals Nested Table Hell and running the home page through the w3c’s HTML Validator reveals, at time of writing, an unprecedented 862 errors! Read more...

We had a visit from the Bath Cats and Dogs Home’s pre-home-check person on Thursday. Expecting the Spanish Inquisition (but no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!) we tidied the whole house. In the end, the inspector only saw the lounge, and chatted to us. We’ll have to get a cat-flap, but apart from that, it looks like we’re on the way to becoming pseudo-parents! Cats: taking the place of children for 20 and 30-somethings since 1972. Read more...

Are you accustomed to describing your political views in simple left-wing/right-wing terms? Then head over to the Political Compass and take the test. Based on my answers, I turned out with the following score: Economic Left/Right: -3.00 Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.90 This means I’m a Libertarian Left-type person. Perusing the lib-left reading list, there was none other than No Logo by Naomi Klein at the top. Admittedly it was the only book there that I’d read, but — hey! Read more...

While I don’t think I have RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) per se, I do get shoulder and neck stiffness and pain more than occasionally. I probably don’t do myself any favours by working in IT(Information Technology) and not taking a proper lunch break away from the computer. So it’s all the better for discovering Workrave, a neat little piece of software that is described on its website thus: Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). Read more...

As I noted last week, I recently got clearance from the Chief Financial Officer of Beadle, Inc. (Kathy) to get broadband internet access at home. Unfortunately, we’re too far from our BT exchange to get ADSL, which means that Telewest is now our only sensible broadband option (if you discount stumbling for wireless hotspots or getting satellite broadband). The cost is higher (£25 per month for 512Kb/s internet if you take a phone package as well), but there’s a nice starter digital TV package for £3. Read more...

I’ve just placed an order for broadband (512Kb/sADSL) from Plusnet, our ISP. I opted for the router starter pack, which includes a single ethernet port, so I’ll have to set one of the PCs up as a bridge with 2 NICs in so that we can still network the two PCs and get online from both PCs. I’ll probably use Mandrake’s Internet Connection Sharing. Oh, I’m off work with a stomach bug. Read more...

We’ve just returned from Chertsey, Surrey, where we camped at a campsite that was a quarter of a mile from the M3 and simultaneously in the Heathrow flightpath. Despite these two (three, if you count camping just outside a town) apparent disadvantages, we had a great weekend. Amanda and Matt Bartlett stayed with us in our sort-of-futureproof six-man dome tent, but unfortunately ended up in the inner-tent whose hooks (they hold up the inner-tent by attaching to the inside of the fly-sheet) were a bit stretched and therefore kept pinging off in the middle of the night. Read more...

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the upgrade to Mandrake 9.1 hadn’t gone as smoothly as I would have hoped. But after the rain, comes sunshine: we can now connect to the internet (albeit via a Windows box on the LAN), print, scan, listen to music and even do the accounts, in Windows while Linux is running, thanks to the magic of VNC. VNC, which is free software, displays the desktop from one machine on the display of another. Read more...

You wait ages to see a film with Anna Paquin in, and two come along at once. Actually it was a coincidence that she was in the last two films I’ve seen: 25th Hour and X2. 25th Hour is the first Spike Lee film I’ve ever seen. I was impressed, as he refuses to let his films be formulaic jelly-mould cash cows. Edward Norton, as always, gives a fantastic performance — this time as a drug dealer who has one more day of freedom before being jailed for seven years. Read more...