So, it looks like we might be in for a bit more snow today. Here though, just on the outskirts of London, a heavy two-minute snowstorm was the extent of our winter weather this morning, and the snow's gone already. If we do get any more, I hope that it will have melted by Tuesday - the day of my driving test, which I'd really like not to get cancelled. However, it would save me the possibility of being carjacked in the middle of my test (the poor guy has to retake it now).

To add to yesterday's list (although I think this one is slightly more common):
  3. When scribbling a note in longhand (with a pen), you write your smileys sideways. Without noticing.

Okay, I normally Don't Do these tests, but...
Which HTML tag are you?

Oh, and in a magnificent reversal of roles, Kazaa is now suing the film and recording industries under claims that they are monopolising entertainment.

posted by Cathy at 11:27 AM

 
You know you've been using the computer too much when:

1. You're writing notes in class, with headings, subheadings, etc., and you want to implement a stylesheet so that you can just enclose the heading text with ‹h3›‹/h3› without having to change alignment, get out ruler to underline, etc.
2. As you're humming there is a slight rasp to your tone because you need to clear your throat; at a low level of consciousness you think: "nasty sound quality, the bitrate must be too low."

I kid you not. Maybe I should spend some more time in the real world?

Barring that, I'm going to have a tentative go at redesigning bent back tulips. Properly. Using CSS instead of tables. Which may be a bad move, seeing as the only CSS I've learned has been gleaned by looking at other people's stylesheets and practically copy&pasting. If that goes well, I may even try to install Movable Type.

And here's a brilliant article from The Onion: U.N. Orders Wonka To Submit To Chocolate Factory Inspections.

The chocolate-making capabilities of [Willy] Wonka's heavily fortified compound have long been a source of speculation. Wonka, defying international calls for full disclosure, has maintained his silence regarding his factory's suspected capacity to manufacture confections of mass deliciousness.

[ . . . ]

"Wonka has shown himself to be a man who cannot be trusted," Annan said. "Whether misrepresenting himself as a limping cripple, only to drop at the last moment into an agile somersault, or exploiting the deepest and most personal character flaws of misbehaving children, Wonka has been a man of shifty, undetermined motives and baffling ends. He must be stopped."

posted by Cathy at 7:29 PM

 
"Yay! It now works"

In fact, it doesn't. For no reason whatsoever that I can see, it apparently works when I test it on my computer, but not when I upload it.

Ptui. (I'm running out of pseudo-swear words; I'm going to have to resort to real ones soon.)

posted by Cathy at 9:32 PM

 
Yay! It now works (and with only an hour of effort, too :)

You might not have noticed, but that was a sarcastic smiley. Maybe I should start using animé smileys, then I could convey emotions such as (-_-) [which means: "He gets angry but he doesn't express his emotion so much outside"] or p(^^)q ["He waves flags for cheering you. We use this mark for encouraging someone else"]. I have never been more aware of the limited range of conventional smileys since looking at this (slightly scary) webpage!

Anyway, re: the CSS positioning, I was using background-position-x:30%; and background-position-y:150px; as suggested by... um, some website that I now can't find. Never mind; I should have been (and now am) using background-position: 30% 150px;. Now I know.

And by the way, I'm not consciously going for the 'biggest number of posts in one day' award (I think that would go to someone participating in Blogathon). It just so happens that there's been a lot today for me to blog. It makes up for this afternoon's post being the first in five days, though!

posted by Cathy at 7:46 PM

 
Having now got home and looked at the !!NEW!! background image with other browsers, the positioning appears to be slightly very muchly f*cked up in Opera and Mozilla, and very likely every lbooyd browser apart from IE, which I was using at school when I stuck in tulips.jpg.

I've said it before (in many different situations), and I'll say it again:

Grr.

It is for reasons like this that I wouldn't dare to look at my pages in NS4; it might just leave me climbing the walls. And now, instead of spending the evening redesigning my site (which I was planning on doing) I've got to start looking up how to do CSS image properties correctly for non-IE browsers, and very likely swearing at my computer.

Bleh.

posted by Cathy at 6:18 PM

 
I'm probably French?

You've rejected the Anglo-Saxon mentality lock, stock and barrel. Given to displays of emotion, activity and a love of life's good things, you're intolerably un-English. Let's face it, you're probably French.

Take the "How English are you?" test at the Guardian website.

posted by Cathy at 3:59 PM

 
So, Part One of tweaking the design is the !!NEW!! background image and slightly different A.link:hover properties.

What do you mean, you didn't notice?

posted by Cathy at 2:37 PM

 
Sorry, just another quick news story - humming recognition software linked to a database of songs:

It's called "Query by Humming," a type of melody-recognition software program on display at this week's Midem music conference in Cannes that identifies a song by title and composer based on a person humming a few bars into a microphone.

[ . . . ]

The correct song title and artist appeared second from the top in a list of 10 possibilities, a good result considering that the software still needs tweaking and that the hummer warned in advance he could not carry a tune.

The software displays the recording's structure, identifying the notes by pitch as high and low notes, alerting the tone-deaf to where their melody fell apart. It checks the result with its own small database of songs.

posted by Cathy at 10:59 PM

 
Fed up with those annoying people talking too loudly into their mobiles on the train? This article could make you smile!

As part of an internal research project, the team designed five prototype “social mobiles” which modify their users' behaviour to make it less disruptive.

For example, the first phone, called SoMo1, gives its user a mild electric shock, depending on how loudly the person at the other end is speaking. This encourages both parties to speak more quietly, otherwise the mild tingling becomes an unpleasant jolt. Such phones, the designers suggest archly, could be given to repeat offenders who persistently disturb people with intrusive phone conversations.

Story via Boing Boing.

posted by Cathy at 8:46 AM

 
So, my job interview came and went. I think it went really well, not like a formal interview at all, just a nice relaxing chat. There are a lot of pros about this job - in that it's just the type of work I'm looking for, and it comes with a nice salary, etc. - but some major disadvantages as well. Such as:

1. They'd like me to work there for 12-14 months, starting this July and then working right up into September, so that there's an overlap between me and the YinI student starting next year. Not good as it means I'll barely have any time to relax after my A-levels are finished, and I won't be able to do any travelling just before I go to university, which is something that I'm possibly interested in doing. Also, I'd be working right through two consecutive Augusts, which just seems abhorrent to me at the moment, since August is most definitely classed in my mind as Holiday Time.
2. At the moment the journey is a 40-minute train ride to Waterloo, then nine stops up on the tube, and then a five-minute walk. Miraculously, yesterday the train/tube part took only just over an hour since both were on time and I barely had to stop walking in between. However, I suspect this is a rare occurrence. This means that I'd have to catch the 7.45am train, which means that (considering how long it takes to drag myself out of bed) I'd have to get up just gone six ay-emm. Very bad.
3. The longish journey enters into Zone 2 on the London transport system, which means that my daily ticket would cost a whopping £12.70, or about £50-£55 per week if I bought a season ticket. This is about one third of my salary (after tax). Plus, the office is going to relocate mid-2004 (when I'd be there) and they don't yet know where to, so conceivably I could have to travel much further and spend a lot more money just to get in to work. Here's a huge tube map if anyone wants to have a look [670k].
4. The company doesn't offer sponsorship through university for this position because they're an architectural firm and don't have any suitable work for an IT graduate. This is another thing that is Not Good, because I was kinda banking on that.
5. Since they use lots of graphics, they have about 75% Mac computers and 25% PCs. This is a 'bad point' simply because I'm being picky (well, only slightly) - I've never used a Mac computer. Well, not since the seldom-used computer in our classroom in Year 5 of the junior school was a Mac, but I barely used it and I can remember it baffling me because I hadn't used them before. However, there is a 2-3 day training course that I would be sent on right at the beginning of the working period, so this might not be a huge problem.

And, as I think I've mentioned, I also applied to IBM's pre-university employment scheme way back in October, which I really would like to do. However, the closing date for applications is stated on their website as the end of February, so presumably they haven't even started processing the application forms yet seeing as I haven't heard one peep out of them. So if yesterday's interview results in a job offer I'll have to either accept it and then pull out of the IBM scheme, or decline it, cross my fingers and hope I get a result with IBM.

My interview was over by 11.30am, so I went to Oxford Street and went shopping, which left me £80 poorer. Knew that was a bad idea. Or maybe not, cos I bought Jasper Fforde's Lost In A Good Book, Douglas Adams' The Salmon Of Doubt, David Lynch's Dune, Hitchcock's Rear Window and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, amongst other things. All discounted, of course, since I am a cheapskate. The Jasper Fforde was bought because I'm now about 150 pages into the prequel to it, which you should be able to see on the sidebar. One of the most entertaining reads I've had in months :)

posted by Cathy at 9:59 PM

 
Ah, it's reappeared again. Jolly good.

posted by Cathy at 11:34 AM

 
Have a look at the coolest digital clock ever. Via brainsluice.

So, my job interview[1] has been rescheduled for Monday. Having looked carefully through the job description I can see that the job entails just the sort of work I want, except that it requires working 'outside normal hours', which I'm a bit worried about and don't really want to do. That's something I'll be asking them to clarify on Monday.

And I'm not sure when you'll actually be able to read this, because my website has vanished at the moment and I can't even ping it - not sure why, but hopefully that'll be sorted soon.

posted by Cathy at 8:54 AM