Friday, May 28, 2004

I had my first internet bill yesterday for my Dodo fixed rate account, I thought it was pretty cheap at $9.90/month and didn't really read the small print, I saw something about excess download limit capped at $14 but thought there was no way I would exceed the limit as I am not downloading MP3's or Vids. I am however working on some stuff for a friend which involves uploading and downloading images via ftp but even so... Anyway it seems I quite easily exceeded the 70Mb limit in a month and I am actually quite glad the cost is capped at $14 because they reckon I was 180Mb over!!?? Can't see that being true myself but hey you live and learn and I have learned that for an extra $5/month (presuming I keep exceeding my bandwidth limit) I can have broadband...but there is a limit on that too...and what if I want to buy a load of mp3's? decisions, decisions...

Jon 2:44 PM Permalink

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Saw a link on Gizmodo to this article on NASA's site about Liquidmetal, which is an alloy blend more than twice as strong as titanium, but softer and more elastic. Apparently a landmark discovery was made during a research project with vitrified metals in 1992 which led to Liquidmetal being tested onboard four Space Shuttle missions and later used to make the solar wind collector tiles on NASA's Genesis spacecraft.

The first commercial product to be made from LiquidMetal? Golf Clubs.

Jon 2:31 PM Permalink

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

There was a time about 4 years ago when people were going crazy downloading MP3's because they were freely available on illegal download services like Napster, nowadays this is a very dangerous path to tread due to the possibility of heavy fines and in extreme cases, prison. Well, thankfully from the internet pirate trade came some good and we have services like Napster to thank for it. I am pretty tired of paying $35 for a CD in Australia, before I left the UK it was about £14 a CD when most of that is for the packaging and distribution, so I see this new trend as a good thing and I just have to get over the initial mental problem of not owning the original CD, a similar problem I had with Vinyl.

Anyway enough rambling there seem to be new services announced every day first was Napster, then Apple's ITunes Store, then Coca Cola Music. Also in Australia there is Telstra's BigPond Music site where you get discounts for having a BigPond Broadband account and now James blogs that Charity organisation Oxfam are launching an online music service where 10p of every track purchased goes to charity. read more.

Jon 9:15 AM Permalink

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Some interesting articles from the BBC:

Flying cars, transparent cloaks, technology which can read minds and games played by brain waves - the stuff of fiction, surely? Not so, these seemingly far-fetched inventions - and more - are now reality. I like the look of Brainball, now that's the kind of sport I'm into! :)

UK cinemas to get digital screens
The move will make it easier for film- lovers to see arthouse films because distribution costs will be slashed, the UK Film Council has said. The new network will double the world's total of digital screens.

Rivals challenge iPod's dominance
In a test of 18 digital music players available in the UK, PC Pro found the iPod lacking in comparison with other devices.

Flat screen boost at LG Philips
LG Philips LCD, the world's second largest LCD screen maker, is to invest 3.4 trillion won ($2.9bn; £1.64bn) to increase production of flat displays. It is part of a 25 trillion won spending plan over the next 10 years to capitalise on growing demand for flat screens on big-screen televisions.

That was the news.

Jon 5:02 PM Permalink

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I'm not sure when this happened or how but it seems my blog template reverted to an old saved version which screwed up the code badly due to my new comments code inclusion. Not sure how that happened but everything should be back to normal now...phew!

Jon 1:41 PM Permalink

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Having just been downloading some forms from the Australian Immigration website (http://www.immi.gov.au) I noticed the design had changed, simplified and was much easier to navigate than its previous incarnations. Well I couldn't resist a peek at the code and I found that the site now uses an XHTML 1.0 Strict tableless layout! The CSS validates no problem and the html only has 2 errors one of which is a hidden form field which it seems they forgot to apply the closing tag to. The other was an illegal attribute for an image. By the way this is just the homepage I'm talking about. Good work.

Jon 5:03 PM Permalink

Friday, May 14, 2004

Made me laugh, and yes this is safe for work don't worry! http://www.nice-tits.org

Jon 4:00 PM Permalink

Thursday, May 13, 2004

After a quick browse of The Register's headlines it seems Nintendo and Sony are about to release new handhelds. The Nintendo DS will offer a voice recognition capability, allowing Nintendo to forecast a future where in-game avatars are literally told where to go and what to do.

"Nintendo's discussion of the unit's power management system notes that "if the user receives a message from a friend or user nearby, DS activates itself from Standby mode" (our emphasis). So there's clearly some kind of instant messaging facility built into the device - again, it looks like Nintendo is thinking beyond the console to a more general youth-oriented communications device."

The stylish Sony PSP is very different in appearance from the Nintendo which is a a retro style clamshell case packing 2x 3 inch screens. The PSP offers a massive 4.3in 16:9 ratio, 480 x 272, 32-bit colour TFT LCD, with the classic PlayStation controls on either side. Inside the box are stereo speakers - there's an earphone socket too - and screen controls. Like the DS, the PSP has 802.11b built-in for multi-player gaming.

Jon 2:37 PM Permalink

Monday, May 10, 2004

Well Blogger have relaunched their website and added lots of new features but the main thing I think I should mention is that all the pre-designed templates for non-creatives are all "CSS based, standards compliant, and usability tested. That's because we combined forces with the Web gurus over at Adaptive Path and their secret weapon, Doug Bowman."

Blogger have not only combined forces with Doug, but a whole host of web standards design gurus including Jeffrey Zeldman and Dave Shea!!

I am going to attempt to turn on the new comments feature too!

UPDATE: comments are now turned on and available in individual pages.

Jon 1:11 PM Permalink

Friday, May 07, 2004

Updated
There isn't a lot of help on the usage of UIObject.destroyObject which led me to believe it would be as simple as creating an object. The component dictionary has the following usage:

componentInstance.destroyObject(instanceName)

Simple...except I couldn't seem to get this working. So here was my problem, I had created a ComboBox inside a movieClip using the following AS:

step3.createClassObject(ComboBox, "products_cb", 5);

In order to remove the ComboBox you have to target the component as you would normally but make sure you put the instanceName in quotes otherwise it will not work:

step3.destroyObject("products_cb");

Maybe this is glaringly obvious to most people but it had me scratching my head for a while.

UPDATE: Yes just realised I originally wrote 'parenthesis' instead of 'quotes' I have now rectified the mistake...well I did say destroyObject for dummies!

Jon 9:24 AM Permalink

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

I see Mr. Zeldman has applied a fresh coat of dulux pixel-wash to his site. In Jeffrey's own words,"If this layout has a soundtrack, it is 'God Only Knows,' by the Beach Boys"... erm...ok.

Update: oh and he has apparently updated his site for his design company Happy Cog Studios as well, looks a lot sharper than the last version.

Jon 5:00 PM Permalink