Archive for January, 2005

Half interesting: late to business studies

Monday, January 31st, 2005 | Life

So basically, I was sat at home at around 2 pm finishing my lunch before I had to head back to school. Then I got thinking. How could I have an hour less that ends at 2:50. There is only 40 minutes considering that my lesson does not start for another ten minutes.

Then something occurred to me. My lesson starts at ten to not ten past ;). Ok, I was a little freaked that this happened although what freaked me out more was the fact that when I got there everyone was sat down and working. James doesn’t usually turn up anywhere near on time.

I had a post to make which I was thinking about earlier. It might have been about the above event to be honest. But anyway to fill you in, I’m sitting around waiting at the moment. I am downloading the World of Warcraft beta which should finish in a few hours (it is 93% done now).

That said I need to do some DVD burning before then to clear space on my hard drive. I am stuck to using MSN Messenger at the moment as I don’t want to have to load Trillian while I have the download taking up so much memory. There is therefore a lot of killing time on various websites – like Nerd Federation ;).

I am also waiting for my phone call which I am hoping will come today and end the waiting. Then tomorrow I have another driving test so I have to be ready by 8:37 for that. That said though that is about the time I normally leave for school. Oh and I need to remember to take my lucky troll.

Opera compatibility testing

Sunday, January 30th, 2005 | Life

I decided that I should perhaps install Opera to check my site compatibility in other browsers. I already test in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 6, as well as Internet Explorer 5.0 when I have the chance at school but hey, there is always room for more testing.

Google Ads look a little weird as they have underlines on the Served by Google Ads although other than that sites like Fallen Nation and Erica Planet which use tables as well as CSS still look fine. Celeb State has a few problems with the CSS though and Gamer Forge will look the same I guess.

The search box isn’t perfect but looks cool and the scroll bars in the selectable menus look good. However those boxes, like IE do not support transparent backgrounds which sucks. Opera doesn’t seem to be too cool with defining margins in CSS with spaces round various places on different pages.

This margin thing is causing some real problems actually, on my Anthony Stewart Head fan site, it pushes the big container div right and over the background. Ok it doesn’t look too bad but still, what is up with this margin thing?

As for the Opera browser itself, I am not too keen on it. There is a lot of clutter ever after I took out one of the bars which the Amazon search on it. I might try removing more but there is also adverts. And I have finally gotten used to the shortcuts in Firefox but none of them seem to work in Opera.

Where is Control + L to get to my location bar? Why does Control + T to open up a new tab bring up a box with my favorites in? Ok I realize why but I think standardizing shortcut keys would be better. It does look really cool though ;).

Another driving test looms

Sunday, January 30th, 2005 | Life

Well it is Sunday night. I still haven’t had my phone call from the WB although there is still another hour and a half to go. As expected look like I will be getting it early in the week though. As for the weekend it hasn’t been that productive, I got some stuff done but when I thought about it, it just seemed to disappear.

I have another driving test Tuesday and you know what they said – 4th time lucky. As it happens this is my 3rd test but I was to give myself a little bit of room in case I mess up again so I’m sticking with 4th time lucky. I am thinking about taking my troll as my Buddha does not seem to be filled with luck at the moment.

That is actually true of my exams. The only I thought went best was my media exam which I actually forgot my Buddha. The other two exams I had I did ok in but no brilliant. Well that is just my opinion as I don’t actually get my results until March. I am actually quite interested to see what I got. I actually need good greats now if I want to get into Leeds University.

I actually have another open day coming up at Leeds although I think it is going to distract me from playing World of Warcraft. I signed up the beta program and am currently downloading although I have been since Friday and am only 46% done. It is one big download.

Give me some kind of direction

Saturday, January 29th, 2005 | Life

Well there is World of Warcraft but anyway, I was thinking – I need some direction. What projects should I be moving on to? At the moment I am pretty busy doing various things and random jobs but I have some time coming up and I need to use the time wisely. Or maybe just eating a lot and lie around all day.

One of my possibilities is to get back to work on Authority Forums. It is a website where you can pick a topic such as Buffy or One Tree Hill (those are the demo topics I am currently using) and find the biggest forums on that topic. I will definitely have that marked as for work.

Content is also an important strain on time. I need to write some new reviews for Gamer Forge and more stories for Worfolk News. Plus there are always sites to finish off, Worfolk Creative is in need of some work to finish it off too.

Plus I also wanted to make a top list site for online games (massive multiplayer browser based games) such as Black Nova Traders, Paranormal Deathmatch, World at War, etc. That is another script that calls on my time.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have a lot to do. I simply need to channel it into specific categories I guess. The ones I am going to focus on I think will be Authority Forums and the online games top list.

Warner Brothers contacted me

Friday, January 28th, 2005 | Life

In my time I have been contacted by people representing a Naked News and the International Space Agency. But now I have moved on to Warner Brothers. All I want to do is build websites ya know, who would have thought it would be so difficult.

Still I understand everyone’s need to be on edge online. I’m not quite sure how I ended up in the middle of these situations though. The whole Naked News thing was actually a dispute between my school and them but they contacted me because I maintained a website about it. That is the way it goes though.

So does this post really have a point? Well not really. It does but it is one of those make your own meanings things, I simply provide the building blocks in the form of paragraphs. Or something like that anyway.

So anyway the situation. I emailed WB back and told them to call me and am awaiting the phone call. I am guessing it will come tomorrow or maybe Monday and we want sort it all out. I’ll keep you all posted with the developments.

The end of Everybody Loves Raymond

Wednesday, January 26th, 2005 | Life

Ok just a few things to point out. First of all, the plug has finally been pulled in Everybody Loves Raymond. May 16 will be the date of the final episode along with an hour long look back at how awesome the show was. NWANews published a story that mentions it, you can find it here.

Also, the Onion AV Club have an interview with Seth McFarlane who is the creator of Family Guy and American Dad for those not aware. It is quite a long interview and well worth a read if you are a fan. You can find it here.

Causality used in a sentence!

Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 | Life

Huzzah! I use that word a lot. But anyway, causation is a word in Law about who is responsible for what, etc. Chain of causation basically establishes the link between the defendant’s actions and the result. But it was a bit boring don’t you think? I needed something a little more interesting.

That is why I came up with causality. It is like section 22, malicious wounding of Dean. it makes no sense and has no reason for existing but never the less it did pass some time and give us a few laughs. But now I have been vindicated! It was used in a sentence and on TV no less.

The story dates back to earlier today when I was watching the latest episode of Stargate Atlantis. I quite like it, possibly more than Stargate SG-1. It is kind of weird with all the Ancients know being known and not being gods or anything but anyway, Elizabeth travels back in time.

Basically she wants to travel forward to time again but she isn’t allowed to as one of the members of the Ancients council, probably the leader guy says they shouldn’t mess with causality – awesome!

Once. Twice. Three times my savior.

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 | Life

Faith Plus One were a great band but that is not what I am here to discuss. This post is basically about WoW (World of Warcraft) and how cool it is even though it isn’t actually out yet in Europe and I haven’t played it. But that does in no way hamper my efforts to be a fan of the show.

So anyway it is a really cool game! I was going to make a post about it being the greatest game ever but I have decided to wait until I actually play it to see what it is like. There were a few negative reviews on GameSpot that shuck my confidence a little but I am moving past that now.

The problem is though that it is too easy. According to one forum post
you can get to level 60 which is currently the cap in as little as 15
says. From what I heard I believe this was a really hardcore mmorpg
player but still. They should defiantly make the game harder so less
people are high levels.

The one thing it has done is spawn plenty of sites for me though. When
I heard about the fan site program I immediately build CassieNet’s
Guide to WoW
and I have been working on a CMS on Blair Space known as Blair Space Tower. I have also re-designed my guild although the new site is not up yet.

The 4 great races on Stargate

Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 | Life

Humans are on there way to becoming the 5th as the Asgard kindly pointed out but originally there were only four of them. I happen to know this as I spent some quality time digging the information up in the search engines. Nothing fills time quite like obsessive cult TV research.

Anyway so these races. There are two obvious ones, one being the Asgard who still spend a lot of time ganging around with us. Can they not destroy the Goa’uld or what? Oh and by the way it took me ages to find that spelling.

Moving on, the next obvious race is the Ancients who built the stargates. One actually appeared in the Stargate Atlantis episode I saw 10 minutes ago. The other races are the Firlings who are pretty unknown (I think) and The Nox who are also friendly.

The page I used for reference is a nice guide, you can find it below:
http://www.stargatesg1971.com/allies.html

Ah well, I feel obligated to mention what is going on now. I watched Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis earlier and now I’ve moved on to the Farscape mini-series. I was going to head other to E4 to watch The O.C. special but that means changing channel which requires effort.

Will Yahoo News do the right thing?

Sunday, January 16th, 2005 | Life

Wow! I just watched the series finale of The O.C. and what an episode it was, I can’t believe I waited this long to watch it. Still, I needed to watch it so I would be ready for series 2 of the O.C. The second series starts Tuesday 25th of January on E4 which is this Tuesday – but on the same time as Stargate Atlantis!

Ah, thank you E4+1, I don’t know what I would do without you. The other timetable struggle I have been having is Desperate Housewives. I have to wait until next Saturday to see episodes 2 and 3 when the first three are back to back on Channel 4 which is pretty cool. Anyway, the Yahoo News thing…

I am still bitter at Google News. They look months to get back to me to tell me that they would not be accepting Worfolk News. Worfolk News rules! Who are they to say that Worfolk News does not meet their requirements, it has news stories updated every single day.

Well anyway I noticed you could submit sites to Yahoo’s news search so I submitted Worfolk News to that, hopefully, they should get back to me soon. I also updated the site and added such things as a meet the team page and published our editorial policy. So fingers crossed.