William Shatner Sings!

Well, regular readers (if any such beasts exist) will have noticed a bit of a change to thegood old Wyrmlog. I’ve finally given in to temptation and gone totally blogger, addingsome self indulgent lists of the books and music I like. I am justifying this by tellingmyself it’s a valid use of the gigantic territories of the whitespace (or indeedgreenspace) that formerly filled the right of the screen when you scrolled down pastthe first page, but am not entirely convinced.

The impetus behind this change is the infamous Stephanie, who has gone and gotherself a Blog. She has kindly linked from this to me, so protocol (not to mention the fact that we’re friends so I’d link to her blog anyway) demands I link backto her. This of course required insertion of a link section, which required a redesign, soI decided to go the whole hog. And here we are. Oink Oink.

So go and check her Blog out. At the moment it mostly seems to be a lot ofcomplaining about the horrors of being an IB student along with occasional referencesto musical theatre, but this is bound to change when she goes off to College. We cansafely assume it will then consist of a lot of complaining about the horrors of being aUT student, but at least (like all her work) it’ll be very well written and entertainingcomplaining πŸ˜‰

(You’re going to kill me now aren’t you Steph?)

In case anyone was wondering by the way, I don’t actually know Succa, I justenjoy his work. Hence the link. Getting very Canuck oriented this Log. I might as well add a link to Avalon and be done with it.

Talking of Canadians, I’ve recently downloaded a copy of William Shatner’s “Lucy inthe Sky With Diamonds” off his 1968 album “The Revealed Man”. This is possibly themost demented recording ever, easily beating his Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy’sbossa-nova “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” (Bilbo! Bilbo Baggins! The bravest littlehobbit of them all!).

The “song” takes in all the excesses of the saccharine, wholesome, reworked, PatBoone rock hits of the 1950s like “Tutti-Fruti”, but somehow manages to remaincompletely un-musical in the process. Fluttering harps, tinkling fairy bells, dementedstring and horn breaks match up with the female voice choir absolutely murdering thechorus to create a sound similar to that of smashing the Lawrence Welk orchestrainto a muzak factory. As if this isn’t enough you then have Shatner’s “unique”interpretation of the lyric smeared over the top like so much rancidbrylcreem.

Now I don’t know what sort of drugs Bill was taking back in the summer of love, butI’m sure he was taking them in the studio, as he variously moans, shouts, whispers,intones, shrieks, whines and grunts the lyric without even once approaching anythingthat could be called singing. The funniest moments of all are at the end of each verse,where the producers decided to slap on a primitive echo effect. Not only does thismean Shatner’s demented vocals go bouncing around the room like he’s recording atthe centre of the earth, but they completely cap out the frequency range of my PCspeakers, adding an entertaining metallic/static effect.

Needless to say I am completely in love with this entire appalling production, and findmyself wandering around idly muttering things like “MARSH-mallow Pies!!” and”TOWering Over your HEAD!!” then cackling inanely. Mind you this isn’t too muchdifferent from my normal behaviour, so no one has really noticed. Or at least no morethan usual.

Oink Oink.

Daring Lousy Guy

I’m rather pleased with myself.

After almost a year of trying to figure out exactly what the lyrics of Shivaree’s very catchy yet disturbingly violent song Daring Lousy Guy are actually about, I’ve cracked it. The answer? Nothing really.

It should be noted that I cannot actually claim to have reached this stunning conclusion through anything but sheer blind luck, specifically my stumbling over a page on www.rinkworks.com that explains it all. Not that the page is actually about Shivaree, or indeed song lyrics, it’s in their “Things People Said” section, and lists a number of appalingly bad English subtitles from Hong Kong martial art films. On perusing this list it became astoundingly clear to me that most of the song lyric is built from these quotes, strung together to create at least a semblance of a storyline.

For example, the song….

Your big face went and hurt my instep,
And I feel very cold,
Just what gives you the nerve to die here?
End my game and fold,

The quotes…

“Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep.” — Pedicab Driver

“The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold?” — Lethal Panther

“Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?” — Armour of God

Putting aside for a moment the concept of a film called “Pedicab Driver”, it may be noticed that there doesn’t appear to be a quote about ending games or folding. We can probably put this down as improvisation neccessary for the rhyme. In any case I leave a full comparison between the lyrics (tip – it helps to select them with the mouse before reading) and the quotes to those interested enough to check them out for themselves.

So, does this mean Ambrosia and Duke are readers of Rinkworks? Or did Rinkworks and the band both harvest the information from one of those annoying novelty emails that float around the net pointing out the failures of other cultures to deal with our insanely complex language? I dunno. I’m just happy that I can finally sing along without worrying about exactly what kind of hideous massacre I might be advocating.

It is a shame that they couldn’t work Brain Theft’s immortal line “A normal person wouldn’t steal pituitaries” into the lyric though…

2002! Like, wow.

Well, the new year is upon us. And has been upon us for a good four days, which shows how organised I am. Happy 2002 to anyone who ever reads this thing.

I celebrated the new year in the truly Geeky fashion by going to bed at 10:00, and getting up early the next day to defrag my hard drive. Go to a party? Bah! I have better things to do! πŸ™‚

These better things by the way do not include making any new year’s resolutions. Year after year of broken resolutions strewn all over the figarative ground behind me (usually within a week of January 1st) convinced me to make a resolution that I could actually keep a few years back. That is, not to make any more new year’s resolutions ever. I have sucessfully kept this one ever since, and am hence rather proud of myself.

These better things on the other hand do seem to include even more updates to The Beginners Guide to Surfarian, including a major change to the orthography. I’m obviously in a linguistic mood at the moment. The review of The Fellowship of the Ring is underway, but seems to have decided to become a gigantic essay, so I don’t know when it’ll be available or indeed finished. And that’s about it.

I’m outa here

And the Server shall eat itself…

Stopgap

Well, it’s been a while between entries hasn’t it? I have a couple of decent excuses though.

The first is that over the weekend of December 15-16 the server decided to eat it’s own hard drive. This is not exactly the kind of thing that you want to happen to a computer that’s handling the shopping cart systems for dozens of e-commerce sites at any time, let alone during the run-up to Christmas. It also (incidently) meant that this weblog wouldn’t work. It took us about a week to get everything going again, so even if I’d had the energy to make entries I couldn’t.

After that of course was Christmas, which has a habit of causing interuptions. Also general sugar-overload induced exhaustion. So I haven’t been up to writing anything.

That should probably change over the next few days. I at least intend to write up a review of The Fellowship of the Ring which I saw with Rebecca and Ryan on Boxing Day. That’s if I don’t get out to Kalgoorlie for a few days. So check back soon.

Oh yeah, I also made a few changes to the Beginner’s Guide to Surfarian, so check that out if you’re so inclined.

Dating Agency: The Saga Continues

Given that it’s been several weeks since my first report on the issue, some readers maybe wondering what happened with that whole dating agency thing. Not a lot really, butI might as well explain it all, since I haven’t really got much else to talk about at themoment.

Much to my surprise I didn’t receive the phone call I was dreading so much.Not right away anyway. In what was obviously a well thought out and tested battleplan, they softened me up with a letter first.

This letter consisted of a gushing, hand signed missive congratulating me for “takingthe first step”, a wad of brochures full of carefully constructed success stories, and fourprofiles of “compatible” women.

Exactly why these women could be considered in the least bit compatible withme remains something of a mystery. The four of them could best be summed upas slim and athletic, slim and adventurous, slim and romantic, and slim and oldfashioned, which sort of sounds like a roll call for next year’s Spice Girl clones. It’squite clear that the agency didn’t even look at my form, and just shovedtogether the standard grab bag of slim women in the right age group (the fact thatthey’d count me as compatible with a bunch of slim women is a deadgive-away πŸ™‚

Of the four the slim and romantic one probably appealed the most, but considering thesection on her ideal partner was a rather good portrayal of the hero from a Mills andBoon novel, I felt rather underqualified. As I’m not Fabio* I figured pursuing itfurther would be a good way of setting myself up for disappointment, and wasting agood amount of money in the process.

So I binned the whole lot.

Unfortunately it was soon after that that the calls began. A representative of the agencythat I shall call (for no particular reason) Lauren, began to phone up, attempting toarrange a time to discuss my “particular needs” (her particular needs being a steadysupply of large denomination cheques).

I avoided these calls by the cunning expedient of being employed (you have to wonder about someone who rings you at home during work hours, unless of course most dating agency clients are unemployed shut-ins – which seems likely). However as the week progressed these calls got more and more numerous, and I realised with horror that unless I took action Lauren would soon figure out that calling me after six might not be such a bad idea.

So, in an act of supreme deviousness, I called back at 8:30 in the morning. This was obviously the optimum time. I’d already established (by way of missing all of Lauren’s previous calls) that I was an extremely busy worker and pretty much uncontactable during the day. So calling at 8:30 was not at all unreasonable. By the same token her previous calls had established that Lauren seemed to have a problem with working outside of office hours, thus she was unlikely to be in, or at least taking calls that early. It also had the advantage that no one else was in the office to overhear me phoning a dating agency.

I do have some sort of reputation to maintain.

As I expected I got an answering machine. I left a short but courteous message for Lauren saying that I wasn’t interested in taking things any further, and have not been bothered by her since.

Which in a way is a shame. I was quite looking forwards to continued pestering calls, because then I’d have an excuse to get really nasty and righteous. When dealing with this kind of thing, my first refusal is always rather short, and passionless (“sorry, not interested”). My second refusal is longer, more detailed, and reasonably polite (“I understand that you have a business to run, and you don’t like losing a prospect, but I’m just not interested, so you might as well stop wasting your time on me and work on some other people”). From that point on I pull out all the chocks. Threats of litigation, government involvement, and growled threats in a low voice descend like paratroopers from above. She’d be sorry she ever harassed me in a shopping centre!!

OK. I’m sane again now.

* Thank God

Middle Earth Geography

Lord of the Rings Page

Well, The Fellowship of the Ring comes out soon, so I figured I might as well launch a little project I’ve been working on for about six months. It’s not actually finished, and there’s a good chance it never will be, but eh.

It’s an interactive map of Middle Earth. Oh yey. I started it to get a bit of hands on experience with DHTML and as a response to the pathetic one on the official movie site which doesn’t seem to actually work, and lists “Wizards” as a race. Pretty damn small race, I mean there are only five of them, and only three involved in the actual plot, the other two unnamed ones headed out east soon after their arrival at the Grey Havens in about T.A. 1000…

Yes, I’m an obsessive Tolkien Fan. Deal with it.

Anyhoo, use the checkboxes to turn map features on and off, and then click on said map features for information about them. I’ve tested it in Netscape 4.7 and 6.2, and Explorer 5.5 and it all seems to work. No guarantee it’ll work for you though (these people with their weirdass browser set ups I don’t know…)

Most of the actual map work is done, apart from clickable links on the “Reunited Kingdom” layer, but a lot of the information pages are still non-existant. So if you click on something and get a blank pop-up window, don’t panic. It just means I’m a lazy bastard.

As if we didn’t already know that.

Enjoy!

The Toilet Trap

Office Move and Toilets

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything (as usual) but I have a good excuse. We’ve been moving office. This means that instead of sitting at a desk all day typing and mousing I’ve had to carry heavy equipment up and down stairs, which is not the kind of work IT professionals are designed for. But it’s all done now, and I can come home after work and do things apart from collapse into bed. Or onto the couch. Or the floor.

When I first joined the company in early 2000 we were bailed up in a pokey little room at the back of an ISP. Not long afterwards we got a big chunk of investment to launch a shopping portal, and moved out to spacious second storey offices in fashionable Subiaco. This was great, except we launched the portal (who’s name I shall not repeat, because the hollow shell is still online and it’s just too embarrassing to let anyone see) just as the dot.com bubble burst, and it was a complete and utter failure.

Actually we can’t totally blame the dot.com meltdown. The idea was we combine all our online stores via a clever front end that would make them look like just one big online store. A great idea, except that at that point our online stores sold…

So we ended up with possibly the world’s first power tool, liquor, lingerie, flower and knife portal. Needless to say it didn’t sell a thing, and before long crashed and burned, trailing funds and the company’s reputation flailing in it’s wake.

Thankfully we’d been smart enough to set the portal wing of the business up under another name (necessary for a .com.au domain name), so the rest of the company didn’t suffer too much fallout. But we were still stuck leasing expensive Subiaco office space, without the promised money pouring in from the golden goose portal to support it. This of course made moving to smaller premises a priority, and last week we shifted offices from our spacious, airy retreat high above Rokeby Road, to a slightly less (but still very) pokey little room at the back of the same ISP we started from.

Net result? Eighteen months and several thousand dollars to move the company one door down the hallway. But at least we’re still afloat, which is more than can be said for a lot of dot.coms these days.

One disadvantage of moving back to the ISP (apart from the fact that we have to fit the equipment of a 100 square metre office into about 16) is we have to deal with the bathroom issue again.

The ISP shares bathrooms with an investment company on the same floor, there’s a door from our side of the building into the bathroom hallway, and one from their side. This wouldn’t be a problem except that in a fit of paranoia the ISP directors decided that they couldn’t risk the occasional merchant banker wandering through and raiding the fridge. To this end they installed an expensive security card system on our door, meaning you need a magnetic card to get out of the hallway.

Yes, to get out.

In their infinite wisdom (or as some kind of sociological experiment) they decided to let anyone into the bathrooms from our side of the building. It’s the getting back out that presents problems. If you’ve left your card at your desk (as frequently happens when you’re concentrating on an insanely complicated programming issue and suddenly realise that can of cola you drank an hour ago wants out now), you end up helplessly imprisoned in the hallway.

It’s like some kind of fiendish trap.

Until recently the only way to escape was to hammer on the door and yell until someone came along and opened it. The door is at the back of the building, next to the kitchenette and away from the offices, so it usually took a good ten minutes of drumming to get anyone’s attention. Even worse, the Investment Bankers from the other side would often hear the racket and poke their heads in to have a good laugh or offer helpful advice such as “You have to knock really hard! No, harder that that!“.

Recently however, after many complaints from staff with sore throats and fists, the directors have seen fit to install an intercom in the hall. This means that you can now hold down a button and yell. Since the other end of the intercom is just outside the door this isn’t much better than the old system, but is at least a bit easier on the hands.

I feel like I’m living in a Dilbert strip.

Dating Agency

Dating agencies. Dating agencies have been on my mind lately. This is not surprising, as on Saturday morning while shopping for a wedding present for Fabian’s impending nuptials at the Galleria (that is I was shopping at the Galleria, he’s actually getting married in a Gazebo) I was bailed up by a pair of rabid dating agency employees, and was only able to escape by filling out one of their forms.

They got me by jumping out of a dark corner and shouting “Are you single?!?” in tones of hideous enthusiasm. The smart thing to do would have been to yelp “No!” and run as fast as possible in the opposite, or indeed any, direction, but my mind was occupied trying to figure out whether to buy the sheets or the dust-buster, and before I could gain control of the situation found myself answering “yes”. Having caught me in edges of their net, they then pulled me further in with “Would you like to meet lots of eligible young women?”. Well, what can you say to that? Actually I could have claimed to be a disciple of Nepalese Buddhism* and walked off leaving them feeling confused and somewhat profane, but as I said, I wasn’t really thinking.

Everything gets a bit hazy after that point but I remember filling out some kind of form, then staggering away wondering what the hell I’d just got myself into.

Supposedly this form is going to be entered into a gigantic computer for “assessment” to see if they have any eligible young women to match me up with. Then they’ll contact me, say how I did, and see if I’m interested in joining the service.

I don’t believe this for a second.

Any day now I’m going to receive a call saying that they’ve found hundreds of attractive girls just dying to meet me, and they can introduce me to them all for only $300 or so. This will not be because my form has been put into the computer. My form will not have been anywhere near the computer. Heck, they may not even have a computer for all I know, they may just throw the forms in the air then staple them together however they land. But anyway, my form will have been resting comfortably with a whole bunch of other forms before being forwarded to a call centre where underpaid phone monkeys (carefully gender matched to their form pile) will phone every single person and tell them that there are hundreds of attractive people waiting to see them. Then sucker them for all the money they can get.

Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I can’t see any other way a dating service can make money. I mean the fundamental problem with a dating agency is the only people you’re going to meet through one are losers desperate enough to join a dating agency. Or, to be blunt, other losers desperate enough to join a dating agency. Certainly the crazed form pushers at the Galleria seemed to be targeting the overweight, ugly, greasy and old* from what I could see on my gift-registry motivated trips back and forth.

So maybe my ideal woman is out there waiting to watch my cheaply made video. But I suspect that, I dunno, Alisen Down for instance, has better things to do with her time. So when that phone monkey calls, I’m going to tell her I’m devoting my life to Nepalese Buddhism, and hang up before she can drag me screaming back in.

(*If indeed there is such a thing as a distinctly Nepalese form of Buddhism, any statement I make about it should not be taken to be indicative of the actual beliefs and practises of the religion, which could probably best be learnt by attending services at your local Nepalese Buddhist temple.)

(* Check, check, check, only a matter of time πŸ™‚

Election 2001 – Australia Decides!

Election Blather

Well, Election 2001 is well and truly upon us here in Australia. This Saturday we’ll all trot off to the polls, and elect a leader to take us boldly into the future. As such (and because with all the political advertising and analysis on TV there’s nothing to watch) I thought I’d spend some time explaining the Australian electoral system to any foreigners who might stumble over this site looking for information on Werewolf: The Apocalypse.

To start with, unlike the Americans, we don’t vote for a specific person to lead the country. instead we vote for a person to represent our little bit of the country which is called an ‘Electorate’ or ‘Seat’ (the latter apparently because the person elected is generally the biggest arse). Once elected, this representative goes off to a big room in Canberra and spends their day sleeping, waking only for tax-subsidised parliamentary meals. This person is typically a member of some political party of other, and whatever party has the most people dozing in the room at the end of the day wins and forms the Government. The leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister, leads the country, and gets slightly better meals.

Well the actual leader of the country isn’t the Prime Minister, it’s the Governor General who is the representative of… well the actual leader of the country isn’t the Governor General it’s the King or Queen, who also happens to be the King or Queen of England at the same time, which is a great way of getting paid for two jobs at once and probably explains why the current incumbent Queen Elizabeth the Second is the richest woman in the world. But the Governor General is the monarch’s representative on the ground as it were. Not that they do much, apart from make speeches, give out awards and open museums. Oh they can dissolve the Government, force elections, declare war, and that kind of thing if they have to, but that sort of behaviour can threaten their pension so they mainly stick to the speeches. The current Governor General used to be a Archbishop, that probably tells you all you need to know about him.

So, whatever party has the most people in the parliamentary dorm (better known as The Lower House, presumably because it’s on the ground floor) wins the election and rules the country. Which means that any political party that wins enough support can get into power. This would be a truly remarkable example of democracy in action, except for the fact that there’s only two parties with enough members and support to ever have a majority.

The first is the Australian Labour Party or ALP. They’re sort of what the American Democrats might be like if they restricted membership to blue collar workers, then held a meeting and decided to completely sell out. Their current leader is Kim Beazley, about whom the best you can say is that he’s lost some weight recently.

The second is the Liberal-National Coalition, who are actually two parties doing the political equivalent of a couple of kids under a long coat trying to pass as an adult. The Liberal Party is like the American Republicans but more evil at heart and less effective at getting anything done. The National Party are a bunch of redneck farmer types whose only claim to fame is that their former leader used to wear an amusing hat. The leader of the Coalition (and current Prime Minister) is John Howard. He is short, balding and has eyebrows that could conceal entire pyramid building Mayan civilisations.

Exactly why the Liberals are called so when they’re about as liberal as Stalin on one of his good days (when the proletariat were being properly subservient, all his enemies had been recently purged and no one was invading) is a bit of a mystery. The obvious confusion that could arise from this misnomer has necessitated the creation of two phrases unique to Australian politics, “Large L liberal” and “Small L liberal”, the former referring to a member of the Liberal Party, and the second to a person who wouldn’t string you up just for taking a shortcut across their paddock.

The rest of the parties are non-starters really. About the best of the bunch are the Australian Democrats who can lay claim to strong and progressive policies on the environment, sexual equality, indigenous affair, social justice, and a bunch of other issues the main parties wouldn’t touch with a ten foot clown pole lest they actually have to do something about them. Not that the Democrats ever do anything about them either, their time is completely consumed appearing on trendy left-wing youth-oriented TV shows and attempting to broker deals with all the other parties in desperate attempts to get any kind of power. If they ever actually got any power they’d probably have no idea what to do with it, but at least Senator Natasha Stott Despoja is kind of cute.

Filling out the political spectrum are a host of wild and wacky minor parties including the Greens (who appear to have abandoned the environment in favour of Gay rights these days), the Australian Shooter’s Party (who think a gun under every bed and bullets in every cupboard are the best solution to crime), Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (who wouldn’t be out of place hosting a garden party for the KKK), the Natural Law Party (who will solve all our problems by employing hundreds of meditators to sit in a big room in Canberra and go “om” – as if this is any different to the parliament we already have), and the Christian Democrats (right wing fundamentalists who can’t seem to decide whether to pray for God to destroy Sydney because of the Gay Mardi-Gra or spare Sydney in spite of the Gay Mardi-Gra).

In addition to the parties, there are usually a few independents standing in each seat. On the rare occasion they get elected their job is chiefly concerned with answering any question put to them with the phrase “I am an independent”, hence any further discussion of them can be safely dismissed with.

So, with this kind of choice, why bother voting at all? Well, actually because you have to.

If you’re over 18 and an Australian Citizen, failing to vote in an election is an offence which can land you with a hefty fine or, for repeat offenders, jail time. This may seem unjustly harsh, but as registering to be on the electoral rolls in the first place is the Citizen’s own responsibility when they turn 18 it’s perfectly simple to avoid prosecution by never putting your name down, thus making yourself politically invisible. This is probably why so much Government money is spent each year telling people it’s a good idea to register, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Of course if you do decide to vote you get to have the fun of not just nominating who you loathe the least to represent you in Canberra, but ranking each candidate in order of preference! This is called (predictably enough) a preferential voting system, and probably lurks behind everything that’s wrong in Australian politics today.

The ballot papers handed out at polling stations have the name and party of each candidate printed on them with a little box next to each. In order for a vote to be valid the voter has to write (yes, write, no faulty Dade County type punching machines here, just illegible handwriting) a ‘1’ in the box of the candidate they like the most, then ‘2’ in the next least objectionable candidate, and so on until all the boxes are full. These ‘preferences’ are then crunched together in some complicated and arcane fashion, probably involving the sacrifice of a Goat and the reading of its entrails, to figure out who wins.

(At the same time as filling out a ballot paper for the House of Representatives (The Lower House, most political institutions in Australia have multiple names, a policy introduced in the 1950’s to confuse the Communists) voters also have to fill out a second ballot to elect someone to the Senate (The Upper House – There are stairs, but most Senators take the lift). Senate ballot papers are generally about three feet wide, and have more boxes than a crossword puzzle. Filling them out properly is a process so complicated that I won’t attempt to explain it here, suffice to say that most people get it wrong and the Senate is generally elected by the small percentage of the population with degrees in theoretical mathematics.)

Most of the population are so indifferent to the running of the country that they’ll fill out the little boxes in any way their chosen political party tells them to. Hence the allocation and trading of preferences between political parties is big business, and anyone coming within 50 feet of a polling station is besieged by foaming campaign workers handing out “How to Vote” cards.

Some voters are so indifferent that they’ll ignore even these idiot cards, and just number the boxes from top to bottom. This, for reasons no one can adequately explain, is called a ‘donkey vote’, and the remarkable number of donkey votes in each electorate make the ordering of candidates on the ballot paper of prime importance (and give a rather accurate idea of how few people would actually vote if given the choice). There are whole Government departments with powerful computers devoted to arranging ballot papers to cancel out the effect of donkey votes. No, I’m not making this up.

There is actually a way to legally fill out a ballot paper so to as deny any of your preferences going to particular parties. I happen to know what it is, but I’m not going to even hint at what it is because (rather remarkably for a country that’s supposed to be a democracy) it’s illegal to tell people about it. I could be fined or imprisoned for giving the slightest suggestion of how to do it, so I’m keeping my mouth well shut πŸ™‚

Some foreigners may by now be thinking how insanely complicated the Australian electoral system is. Well, just to make things more complicated we do the whole thing over again individually for each state. Yup, each State has it’s own Government, with it’s own candidates, own political parties (generally running dog lackeys of the Federal parties with local idiosyncrasies pegged on) and own elections. And then of course there’s Local Government elections as well. Basically this means that the average Australian citizen barely goes a year without having to vote. We’re probably some of the most pesteringly enfranchised people in the world.

So, all that said, how am I going to vote? That’s my business πŸ™‚

CSS Blues

Fixed Surfarian

Once upon a time a company named Netscape released a web browser that sort of supported CSS standards. Then another company named Microsoft released a web browser that also sort of supported CSS standards, but in a different way. Then Denys the Purple Wyrm learnt basic HTML and built a web site that worked with the Netscape browser, and sort of worked with the Microsoft one. And all was well.

Then Netscape released a browser that really supported CSS (or at least moreso than version 4.7), Microsoft followed suit and Denys’s website fell to bits in a messy heap.

So I’m currently in the process of fixing up the horde of horrible CSS errors plaguing the site. I’m working section by section, so far the Junk Files and Guide to Surfarian (the worst offenders) have been fixed (with Netscape 6.1 at least) and the rest will follow suit. To speed this process up, please feel free to send me griping emails about any part of the site that looks horribly wrong in your browser. You never know, I might actually get around to fixing it.

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