Archives: November 2009

Blue Beanie Day 2009

Nov30
Published on: November 30, 2009
Categories: Geek, Holiday
Comments: No Comments

bluebeanie2009 Monday, November 30th is the third annual “International Blue Beanie Day

Q: What is it all about?

A: Its in support of Web Standards, To try and convince all the big boys to agree on a standard and keep to it. Lets get code working the same no matter what OS, Browser you are using.

Q: Why a Blue Beanie?

A: Well the Cover of “Designing with Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman (Who started Blue beanie day) has a blue beanie on it. Yup its that simple.

Q: What should I do?

A: Here I will simply quote Me Zeldman.

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Beg, borrow, or buy a Blue Beanie (or Blue Toque in Canada) and snap a photo of your mug wearing the blue. (Or get creative with Photoshop). Then on November 30, switch your profile picture in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, (and any other social network) and post your photo to the Flickr Blue Beanie Day 2009 group.

Next Steps

1. Make a personal commitment to fight Web Standards apathy. Show solidarity with the Standardistas on Monday, November 30th, 2009.
2. Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie (blue hat or cap, even a black or grey one will do in a pinch.)
3. Take a photo of yourself wearing the Blue Beanie. Or take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies.
4. Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and other social networks on Monday, November 30th, 2009. Remember to switch your Facebook profile photo that day, too!.
5. Start by inviting all your friends to the Facebook Event for Blue Beanie Day 2009.
6. Promote Blue Beanie Day on your blog, wiki, facebook page, twitter tweets — telling all your friends to get ready for Blue Beanie Day.

Want to help with planning the 3rd Annual Blue Beanie Day? Organize a group photo in your city? You might qualify to win a free copy of Zeldman and Marcotte’s (brand new) Designing With Web Standards 3rd edition. Contact Douglas Vos (mailto:doug.vos@gmail.com?Subject=BlueBeanieDay2009)

CN.

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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Nov26
Published on: November 26, 2009
Categories: Holiday
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So, Today is the last Thursday in November, Which means two things :-

  1. Shit, Its getting close to Yule, and were did the year go?
  2. Its Thanksgiving Day.

Yes, Its thanksgiving. The day Americans give thanks for the Pilgrims who landed on the shores of America.  Wiped out thousands of the natives with biological warfare and stole the country with the cunning use of flags and the Winchester repeating rifle!.

Talking of the Pilgrims.  “They left Plymouth and landed in Plymouth. How lucky is that?

Whatever the historical reasons for the holiday, Its now a day to sit back, give thanks to those things you are thankful for, eat and drink lots, and rest up for the mad rush of “Black Friday“.

So “Happy Thanksgiving”

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CMS Pt2: Adding Themes & Modules

Nov25
Published on: November 25, 2009
Categories: CMS, WebSite
Tags: , ,
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Welcome to the second part of the Series “CMS: Do They Really Work?“.  In the last post we Installed and set-up a Drupal CMS ready to be turned into a Website. The Site is still in its Vanilla Install state, No work has been done yet to the site.  We are now going to see how easy it is to add Themes & Modules to the system ready for the work of actually building the site.

So to start off, Go to your Website and log in with the Administer account you created during the install process.

Adding Additional Themes.

Before we Add extra Themes take a second to look at the ones that came with the base install. There could be one there that suits your needs, meaning you do not have to add any additional ones.

Administer -> Site building -> Themes

You will see that Drupal comes with Six default themes for your use.

For a look at the Vast selection of additional Themes go to  http://drupal.org/project/themes and spend some time finding the one or ones that suit the style you want for your site. I’m going to add “Deco, Absynthe, & Dropshadow“. Simply download the themes you like and upload to your site.

Themes should be placed in their own subdirectory of the sites/all/themes
directory. For multisite installations, they can also be placed in a subdirectory
under /sites/{sitename}/themes/, where {sitename} is the name of your site.

unzip/tar the Downloaded file.

tar -zxf Filename  ie: tar -zxf absynthe-6.x-1.4.tar.gz

Now if you go back to your list of installed Themes under Site building, you will notice the one you just uploaded. Tick the Enabled box and its up and running. Yes. Its that simple!

Adding Additional Modules.

This is exactly the same procedure as adding Themes (Nice and Simple) The only differences are :-

Administer -> Site building -> Modules

http://drupal.org/project/modules

Modules should be placed in their own subdirectory of the sites/all/modules
directory. For multisite installations, they can also be placed in a subdirectory
under /sites/{sitename}/modules/, where {sitename} is the name of your site.

  • CMS Pt1: Setting up the Site

I have always been an Old School Coder, doing 99.9% of all my web work using the Text Editor of my choice. I used to scorn at those who used dream-weaver, front-page, or even the basic CMS’s. Did they do so because they lacked Code Monkey Skills? Why was VI,Notepad,etc not good enough for them?

But those days are gone, I am more mellow in my old days, less eliteist.  And since I joined the Three-Ninjas as resident TechyBod I have been happily using this site, and am quite impressed with the backend (Word-press) So have decided to try out

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WARNING! May Contain Nuts.

Nov24
Published on: November 24, 2009
Categories: Films, Religion, Weird
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So I was watching a Documentary style film the other night. It was called “New World Order” and was about a bunch of different well known Conspiracy Nuts, as they campaigned against the “Bilderberg Group” and the “New World Order“. It was an entertainingly funny, and well worth a watch.

There was just one small thing that bothered me about it. A lot of the people featured had a lot of the same major problems with the evil “New world Order

  1. They ignored the majority’s wished and were forcing their own views and values onto everyone.
  2. Anyone disagreeing with the Views of the NWO were rounded up without trial, tortured for confessions.
  3. They were engineering Wars for no reason other than forcing their views on Others.

Now, All the people saying these things, also stated they wanted to be left alone and to live as they wanted in their devout Christian ways.

Now that’s the bit that Annoyed me. Christianity? In the early days I’m pretty sure the history books say :-

  1. They ignored the majority’s wished and were forcing their own views and values onto everyone.
  2. Anyone disagreeing with the Views of the NWO were rounded up without trial, tortured for confessions. And was then burnt as a witch. Witchcraft Trials/ Inquisition
  3. They were engineering Wars for no reason other than forcing their views on Others. Anyone remember the crusades?
  4. They entered foreign countries, murdered all the native religions and forced their own brand of beliefs on the masses against their will.

Yes. Nice Conspiracy Nuts, Your beloved Christianity was the worlds first NWO.

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hallucinations of Mass SelfSucide

Nov18
Published on: November 18, 2009
Categories: Illness
Tags:
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OK, Before I get onto writing this post I feel I should point out that I am not 100% convinced suicide is the correct term for the title.  Now I am not a student of Latin, in fact the closest I have ever come to studying the language is lying with my head in the lap of a girl who was practicing for her Latin Oral.  But that’s another story for another time.

Now, I know the ****cide words for different kids of killings are made up from two parts. the ending cide from the Latin Caedere, Cecidi meaning Killing.  And the first part depicts the kind of thing being killed. for eg:-

  • regicide: killing of a king/Queen
  • homicide: killing of a human
  • parricide: killing  of a parent
  • fratricide: killing of a brother
  • sororicide: killing of a sister
  • uxoricide: killing of a wife
  • mariticide: killing of a husband
  • herbicide: Killing Plants
  • suicide: Killing of yourself

Now the best i can work out the word i really needed to use would be genesuicide which i may just have made up now, and only people who know the meaning of the three parts of the word would have been able to work out what on earth I was trying to say. So for now I will settle for suicide, Unless anyone can correct me.

Now to the Post… *Random Dramatic Music*

I have been ill the last few days, some form of flu (not of the aporckalypse kind) yet still a very nasty one. Lets just say I crawled into bed around 9pm Sunday, and apart from trips to hug the toilet did not crawl back out until some point Tuesday evening.  Now during this extended stay in bed, I did start hallucinating slightly.  This is the only the second time I remember being so ill i hallucinated, the previous time it was with some very strong 48 hour debilitating flu as well. So maybe the same strain?

The previous hallucinations of several years ago involved some microscopic aliens with a odd fetish for saucepans. Apparently “so they informed me” the common saucepan is the greatest invention of all time, you can cook with it, eat from it, drink from it, carry stuff (both liquid and solid) in it, Use it to paddle, bail out, dig, as a rudimentary trap for small animals, and even as a weapon. I was tempted at the time to argue for the validity of other inventions possibly in the medical or gaming areas as a better invention to worship, but when you are convinced your bed is full of microscopic aliens armed with saucepans you tend just to agree with them and pray you get better soon.  Anyway that’s a different story.

This time the hallucinations were mainly auditory, it sounded like thousands of me’s were all talking in my head. and each was different in a slight way. As if every me from the multiverse had all been pulled into the same place at the same time, so each of their thoughts could be heard by all the others. Do you realise how impossible it is to sleep with hundreds of voices arguing, crying, moaning loudly in your head at the same time? It did not make it better that one of the voices could not cope, so kept singing one verse from the song Puss in boots over and over again to drown out the sound of the others.

Pussycat, pussycat where have you been?
I’ve been to london, now I’m queen
Sitting pretty, I don’t wear suits
And the mice all call me -
Puss’n boots

Puss’n Boots By Adam & The Ants

Over and over and over solidly for over ten hours. I tell you, I was getting close to giving up until I noticed the volume of voices were getting less and less over time, like there was less me’s about.  Now I’d like to think this was my bodys reaction to getting better, that it was natural progressions.  The only thing stopping me believe that is the fact that as the number of other me’s dropped the voice of my subconscious got happier and happier.

I believe I mentioned how all the multiverses version of me had slightly different qualities? well out of the hundreds that were in my hallucination, only my subconscious was a sociopath.

Luckily it was all just a Hallucination.  Wasn’t it?

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The Quest for the Mythological Creature.

Nov15
Published on: November 15, 2009
Categories: Dating
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From the dawn of time Man has quested to hunt out Mythological Creatures.  How much money and man-hours have been spent investigating loch ness for the monster? How many People have walked the American woods looking for big foot?  Its our natural instinct to try and find the truth in such myths.  So, to do my bit for the advancement of human knowledge, I decided to spend some time this weekend attempting to find out some more information on a “mythological Creature.”

Which Creature are you hunting?” I hear you ask, “Vampires? Werewolves? Big Foot? Teggie?

NOTE: Teggie if you want to know is a sea monster a bit like the Loch Ness monster but from Bala Lake.

Nope. The Mythological Creature I am trying to prove if they exist or not is….. *insert drum roll*…. “Intelligent Women”  Yes, those things we have all heard about, and know a friend of a friend who may have met one once.  Women who are intelligent and witty.

So. How did I do my research? Well I signed up for an online dating website. I will not name which one of the major UK ones I used since they may be a bit upset that i used their site for something other than they had designed it for. I will say its one of those that ask you loads of questions about yourself, and what you like in a partner, so it can match people by personality and likes.  To be fair I set “no preference” to all subjects like distance, if they have kids, religion, race, everything. The only things i stated were important were, Intelligence, Sense of Humor, Personality.

So, I filled in all the details. submitted it, and waited while their servers calculated the details, and searched a database of UK people trying to match anyone based on my requests.  After a while the results came in.

NO MATCHES FOUND

So there you have it, One of the largest online dating sites in the UK (If not the world) with a reputed 60% female membership has 0 women who met the standards set.  So far its not looking good for finding evidence of these creatures.

I will keep you informed of any more evidence found one way or another on this subject.

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Least We Forget

Nov11
Published on: November 11, 2009
Categories: Holiday
Tags: ,
Comments: No Comments

I’d  like to take a minute out of my normal safe day, to think about those heroes who gave their lives so that I can have a safe free life.  Thank you all!

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you’ll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you’ll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

There’s so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

Now the sun’s gone to hell
And the moon’s riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it’s written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms

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NaNoWriMo – The Challange Begins

Nov02
Published on: November 2, 2009
Categories: NaNoWriMO
Comments: 2 Comments
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series NaNoWriMo 2009

I’ve decided to set myself a challenge, To see if I can get back into writing.  So I am taking part in this years NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo? you ask

National Novel Writing Month. Its a yearly challenge where people try to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. (that’s 1666ish words a day! for those of you interested in such maths.) More information can be found on the NaNoWriMo website.

To Make it slightly more of a challenge I’ve given myself Nov 1st off from writing, and am starting today (The 2nd)  No I’m not insane, I just wanted my birthday off.

So, Pens at the ready (Symbolical pens as I will be using a keyboard) and lets begin.

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