It lives.

More later.

Very Important Project has eaten all my blog posting time, and will continue to do so for the next week or two. It’s actually been mostly fun and I’ve learnt some fascinating but very strange things from the depths of various browser’s DOM handling, but having worked most of the Saturdays for the past two months and last Sunday my brain is starting to run down. The number of days off in lieu which I’m owed is just a number not anything that I’m capable of looking forward to. This will change of course, but right now I need a break.

So it’s nice that this weekend I’m off to Dublin for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. So, with luck and, failing that, liberal applications of Guinness and whiskey, I won’t be thinking about anything except family and having a good time at all for three days. This is a Very Good Thing.

Very True Mood:  optimistic

Consider the following code:

<form action="whatever" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="foo" value="a very long string" />
<input type="checkbox" name="confirm" />
<input type="submit" />
</form>

In Internet Explorer (confirmed in both 6 and 7) submitting this form with the checkbox ticked results in no response from the server. (Submitting it without the checkbox ticked just brings you back to where you started.) No problem at all in Gecko-spawn or Opera.

Anyone seen anything like that before? And better still, got a solution?

Very True Mood:  irritated

Spilling olive oil on the keyboard.
Pros: gives it that nice shiny look.
Cons: too many to mention really.

Sigh. Not a bad weekend really. Lovely weather, which I saw out the window as I was working. Got some nice JavaScript written and identified a few more IE CSS bugs that will need to be worked around. And a cracking episode of Doctor Who yesterday.

Very True Mood:  morose

I’m working on a new web site that will be live for the next two or three years, hence I’m keeping an eye on both versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the WCAG guidelines. One of the things that has been requested is embedded videos (similar to YouTube) within relevant pages as opposed to having a standalone video section.

Thinking about embedded video meets accessibility and looking through WCAG 2.0 I’ve come up with the following:

To meet Priority One guidelines

• Provide a full text based alternative to the video, i.e. a transcript plus a label explaining, more or less, “there’s a video and this is the transcript of it”.
• Provide synchronised on screen captioning replicating the dialogure and important sounds in the video.

To meet Priority Two (our goal) guidelines

• Provide synchronised audio description (noting changes of location, identifying speakers, etc.) in the gaps in the dialogue of the video.

To meet Priority Three guidelines

• Provide an extended audio description that pauses the video in order to create room for extra information to be relayed aurally.

Does this agree with everyone else’s interpretation of the guidelines?

So, there’s big project X at work, that’s eating up all available time for the next few months. Them emergency Y crops up and the solution to that could easily be incorporated as part of X, but it will probably need to be fixed sooner. And then long standing problem Z raises several of its hydra headed forms at once. Gah. I just know I’m going to be in a bad mood all weekend even though I’m going to be trying hard not to think about work at all.

This afternoon we’re off to see Hot Fuzz. It had better be bloody funny.

Very True Mood:  grumpy

I got a letter summonsing (love that ’s’) for jury duty. March 19th. With the schedule for the launch of the new site and the several levels above critical part that I’m to play in said schedule, that’s a really, really good time. Or maybe not.

Yeah, I’m going to have to defer it until later in the year but until then, I’m looking forward to the expression on people’s faces at work tomorrow when I tell them.

Very True Mood:  mischievous

Yesterday was the office Christmas party. A 1940s themed affair (though Jez and Nick missed by a few decades). I had fun but a sixth sense told me to head home fairly early (was the free booze about to run out?), but other people have tales to tell and hangovers to nurse.

Little did the revellers at The Pigalle Club realise that one of their number was a slumming aristrocrat:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
The Most Honourable Steve the Deipnosophist of Throcking by Hampton
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Yep, I had to look it up as well.

Very True Mood:  tired

Had a fantastic long weekend, four days of relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Thursday night, left work and headed down to Croydon where ate at Wagamama’s (the Salmon Ramen is very good) before going to see Mitchell and Webb at the Fairfield Halls. I think this is the third time I’ve been to that particular venue - the first was to see Victor Borge some twenty years ago, and the second was to see the Rocky Horror Show about eight years ago. Anyway, Mitchell and Webb were just as good live as on the telly - some familiar sketches (taken to new extremes in a few cases) and some I didn’t recognise from the TV series.

Friday, we went up to the British Museum to see The Past from Above exhibition. Really breath taking stuff that really brought home just how vast the extent of human history is. Most parts of the world have see who knows how many lifetimes lived, with not a single line in the history that most of us know.

Also at the BM, was a (relatively) recently reopened gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment and hence the birth of the museum itself. It does a very good job of emulating what the BM is like in our secret thoughts - all book lined walls and eclectic displays.

Saturday, pink_weasel went to play at the Tate whilst I stayed home and read comics. But I did find time to visit West Norwood’s first ever farmer’s market (it’s going to be a regular event every two weeks) where I picked up some cheese and some welsh dragon sausages (pork and leek and chili). In the evening I left a very knackered Lettice in bed and went to Giroscope’s birthday bash in fitzrovia - Duke of York, for beer Palms of Goa for curry; and finally The Fitzroy Tavern, for more beer.

Sunday was a quiet day at home - my dad brought the second of two leather chairs, Lettice poured dye all over a book (on purpose) and we started watching Doctor Who - The Invasion (with the missing episodes filled in by animation). Though not the best animation in the world it captured the likenesses of the main characters well and was, of course, cleaner and smoother than the surviving ’60s live action episodes.

Today, we lay around in bed and then went to Croydon again to see Casino Royale. Possible the best Bond film ever. Certainly the best since the ’60s. Having a actor who can actually act certainly helps. It will be interesting to see what they do next time, now that they’ve done the whole “how Bond becomes Bond” bit, will they find something suitably interesting for Craig to get his teeth into for the sequel?

Phew. Back to work tomorrow where with any luck I’ll be holding second interviews for my assistant. With luck we’ll be able to make someone an offer at the end of the week and have them start very early in the new year. Which will mean that I should be able to take more than two days off next time.

Very True Mood:  satisfied

The reason I don’t post so much at the moment is partly that my brain is a bit frazzled at the moment and partly that when I write a long post (like version one of this one) it get’s eaten by the computer-interweb-monster.

Anyway, here’s some of what I wanted to tell you all.

Wordie “Like Flickr, but without the photos.” Silly but funny.

A Preacher TV series? OMG. How fucking cool would that be if they did it right?

Speaking of TV (oh I’m smooth I am). Is Robin Hood the gayest programme on the box at the moment? Can you point at any one of the regular characters and say “Yes, they’re 100% heterosexual”? Let’s look at them all:

• Robin - ran off to the Holy Land rather than marry Marion; homo-erotic wrestling match with Guy last week.
• Much - follows Robin around all the time making puppy dog eyes
• John - left his wife to live in the forest with a bunch of men
• Alan - did you see him trying on the women’s jewellery a couple of episodes back?
• Will - claims to love Djaq, who…
• Djaq - man’s name, men’s clothes, short hair
• Marion - creeps out of the house at night disguised as a man
• Guy - all that tight black leather and generally being the Sheriff’s bitch
• The Sheriff - has a gimp called Guy; seemed equally interested in the nun and the serving boy

So much denial. They must have cut down Sherwood Forest to make all those closets. Still good to see this getting airtime at 7pm on BBC1. And the only complaints are about the historical accuracy. That’s progress for you.

Built my first AJAX powered web thingy. It’s very Web 2.0 - even got popup message box things with semi-opaque backgrounds.

Back on Web 1.33333 I’ve updated the Dinosaurs in Miniature web pages. Added 10mm and 6mm listings and updated the existing lists.

Oh, and that fuckwit who thinks MI5 are stalking him through the telly has spammed radw, presumably thanks to some cross posted threads from a uk. group. Still it makes a change from the normal moronic trolling. Why do I still read? Must be some form of masochism.

Going to see Mitchell and Webb tomorrow. In Cryodon, but it’s okay - I’ve had my innoculations. That’s the start of a long weekend and we have big plans. Take in a film or two, do the Christmas shopping, visit the British Museum, giroscope’s birthday curry, clean the flat from top to bottom. Come Tuesday I’ll be glad to be back at work.