Archive for March, 2005

Opera 8 beta 2

Posted on in Browsers.

Installed the latest beta version of Opera this morning.

Things I like

  • fieldset elements are now fully stylable – hence the WP create/edit post page is no longer all over the place.
  • Feeds are much better handled – as well as supporting RSS Atom is now supported. The Feed interface has also been separated from the mail/usenet interface.
  • User Interface has had a revamp and feels more posished and less cramped.

Things I don’t like

  • The icon for a newsfeed associated with a web page is the letters “RSS”, even when the feed is Atom. Firefox made the same mistake and it was widely discussed at the time. Mozilla changed it to the current icon. Why is Opera repeating someone else’s mistake?
  • Some of the keyboard shortcuts have either been broken or changed and not documented properly. CTRL+G should toggle bewteen Author and User modes but instead brings up the Search box. SHIFT+G should load images but instead toggles between Author and User modes. G should cycle through the three image display modes but instead does nothing.

Counting the cost of war(games)

Posted on in Miniatures.

Renew SFSFW membership: £18.00 and Rebel Storm miniature from eBay: £2.20.

Running total is now £356.74

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More Dinos!

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures.

Couple of bits of dino-mini goodness from Iron Wind Metals, who have rereleased some more of the Ral Partha Prehistorics range; and they’ve announced a deal with John Winter to produce a range of miniatures that will feature at least one dinosaur.

John Winter Tyrannosaur

It seems a bit cartoony and it’s hard to judge the size but it looks like it could fall between the available Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosuar miniatures. So, Daspletosaur anyone?

“Shit! I hate not being the bad guys.”

Posted on in Films, My Life.

… is probably the only good line in Chronicles of Riddick. But it’s very nearly good enough on its own. And Alexa Davalos (a) is hot, (b) kicks ass, and (c) is much better in this than she was in Angel.

Yes, I’m recovering from my lousy week by drinking beer and watching crap SciFi movies. Next up Hellboy.

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What a week.

Posted on in Blogs, Computers, My Life.
  1. My grandfather’s funeral tomorrow.
  2. Too much work.
  3. Blog vanished in a sea of PHP error messages for twenty-hours and then came back as suddenly and mysteriously as it had gone.
  4. Norton Internet Security going haywire and killing first e-mail and then all Internet connections. I killed it in turn.
  5. No pink_weasel.
  6. Except on Wednesday when the BT SMS service thingy phoned me about six times with what it claimed was a message from Lettice’s mobile number saying just “please call”. A call to her parents and then a call to her (at Versailles at the time) revealed this to be nothing to do with her.
  7. Had to cancel an Idle Speculators meeting on Monday.
  8. Recruitment consultants almost fighting over me. Nice if they weren’t such utter muppets concerning, oh just about everything.

Please, can next week be less hassle?

All alone

Posted on in My Life.

Lettice, pink_weasel, is in Paris, living the high life of a textiles student. So I’m all alone.

Might be worse. A recruitment consultant (oh yes, them again) called today about a job that would have involved a month or two in the USA getting up to speed with the parent company. That would have been different. But I think the role needed a different skill set. Can’t be sure, the job spec was typically vague.

Big trouble

Posted on in Computers, My Life.

I think something is buggered. I blame Windows. Of course. Two pieces of software are acting oddly. Norton Internet Security tells me something about “Symantic User Session has encountered a problem and needs to close” whilst Pegasus Mail tells me that the connection is being refused by all four of my mail servers. The fact that my firewall and my e-mail bugger up at the same time is very worrying. I suspect that some Windows driver or whatnot (technical term) that those two processes use has been corrupted but who knows?

I see an evening of burning backups and reinstalling stuff. That needs stamina, stamina needs fuel, fuel of the frothy brown liquid variety. Maybe. Grragh.

£400 for a Mac Mini? Hmm….

Counting the cost of war(games)

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Miniatures.
Emperor Palpatine

Two Rebel Storm boosters. My uncanny talent continues. I’m now on seven Very Rares and only four Rares out of eleven boosters. Got Emperor Palpatine and IG88 this time.

Running total is now £336.54

We’re coming up to the five month mark. Salute will be just after the half year mark. Will the total expenditure for the year be under or over a grand? Time to flog some more stuff on eBay and bring the total down a little.

But… It may go up before it goes down… I’ve found a site which lists some of the out of production DZ and HLBS prehistorics. No I’m not telling you where it is until after I’ve checked how much they have left in stock.

It had to happen

Posted on in Doctor Who, WWW.

Seems that someone got their hands on a copy of first episode of the new Doctor Who and uploaded it to a bit torrent site. As expected the fans are split between those who have rushed to download it and those who are waiting to see it properly.

Best quote:

I’d feel soiled and dirty if I’d watched it that way.

Now if anyone has some raunchy Billie home movies, I’d gladly download them. ;o)

[d0d6hs$q6$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk]

Posted on in Miniatures, My Life.

Went to see the doctor today. Continuing the battle to control my blood pressure. I need to lose weight. So here’s my cunning plan. Pb for lb. I stop eating junk food and put the money I would spend on evilness towards buying more miniatures. Sounds like a winner.