Keyword Searching

Just stumbled upon this site after I was assisting a customer with their word document that had inherited "selective" spellchecking on some parts of the file - but not others. The site contains a series of "5 minute productivity tips". I expected it to be full of "teamworking, networking and corporate bitch making" skills but I found the Searching with Firefox Keywords tip and was plesantly suprised! I thought I used most of the nice Firefox stuff like Live Bookmarks and the "Open In Tabs" stuff - but this is cool. When searching at a site (such as Google) you can right-click the box you put the search text into and then click "Add a keyword for this search". You will then be prompted to put in a bookmark for the page and a keyword too. Put in the keyword "g" for Google for example. Once it has been saved, you can then type "g taoski" into the Firefox address bar and it will immediately search Google for Taoski. You can also add keywords to any bookmark you have stored so you could just type g and press Enter to take you direct to Google too! So now, I can quickly search through that HomeMadePornTorrents site I have access to. Technorati Tags: firefox, bookmark, google, taoski, word, spellcheck, tabs

Boot Camp

Now this is pretty serious stuff. Everyone knows (well - you should by now) that Apple recently made the switch to Intel chips in their hardware. There have been plenty of people out there that have searched for and managed to get Windows XP running on the "MacTel" boxes - although quite a bit of messing was needed to get it working. Today, Apple have released the beta of Boot Camp which allows you to install XP for it to co-exist with your OS-X installation!

Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.⁽¹⁾ Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them. Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it'll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

W00t! This is going to cause quite a few ripples in the computing world! I don't expect it would take too long for someone to get a mac just to run XP (or Vista) but then switch to OS-X because "it works!". Smart move Mr Jobs. I salute you! There's probably not much that I could do on XP that I could'nt do on OS-X too. Awww.. I wanna new PC.

WTF?

Why is it, that I work on an iT Helpline - but get jobs passed to me to fix that are raised by other members of the iT Helpline regarding silly issues with their PCs? I'm sure that if I qualified as a car mechanic I would take my car to the local repair shop each time it needed a bulb changing or petrol putting in. I dispair.....

Purves Welcome

The Grass armchair is self assembled, each pack contains 14 corrugated cardboard frames and 100g pack of grass seeds. You will need about 240 litres of soil, to fill in the frame. First find the right spot, because once the armchair has grown you won't be able to move it!! You can put up to 20cm of gravel with in the frame then the soil. Spread the seeds evenly using only 4/5 of the bag of seeds. Press them in and water slightly so that the soil is humid. Water the armchair everyday. If it rains cover the armchair until grass has grown, to avoid the chair becoming waterlogged. After 10 days the grass starts to grow. If the grass has not grown evenly use the rest of the seeds to even it out. Once the grass has reached 10cm, cut it to 3cm, and keep it to this height. Now you can sit back and relax!

Purves and Purves Just saw this mentioned over at Gizmodo and thought it was cool! And how much for some bits of oddly shaped cardboard and a packet of grass seeds? £65 - thats how much. I'm off to the skip at the back of the local supermarket to get mine started.

Busy busy busy!

Phew! Had a real busy day here at work today. I cycled to work again through the icy cold wind this morning and even managed to make it out at lunchtime for a quick ride too. Well... a ride up to Subway for a foot-long Veggie Max sub! W00t! I have noticed after just two days of cycling, that when I get to work, although I feel all sweaty and my lungs are insanely burning in a sea of my own mucus, I feel so much more awake and ready to do stuff! It's cool. The wife's out at her Salsa class tonight, so I get to spend a little more quality time with my Xbox, PC and 360 - before I sell them all!! HA ha ha ha.... (evil laugh). Swimpig promises to make an appearance too at some point. Maybe he wants his arab strap back?

Three Six oh?

I am quite close to making somewhat of a decision. Now that I have been paid and the overdraft is slightly smaller after maxing it in New York, it's time to think about subscribing for a years worth of XBOX Live and getting a new game for my 360. However - what game to get is one question... But - "do I want to" is the most important one! Now don't get me wrong. I love my 360 (like a bruvver! burp) but hardly ever play on it. At present my "gaming time" is spent either fitting in a quick game of Fifa 2006 on my old Xbox after the wife has gone to bed or snatching a few games of the same title on my Gameboy Advance SP (while I crap). The 360 sits redundant beneath my TV. The most I have used it for recently is to stream our New York photos to from my Media Centre PC.

• Maybe it was a rash decision to buy it?
• Maybe I should have got a PSP like I was thinking?
• Maybe I'm just having a "downer" on it at the moment?

Who knows. I certainly don't. But a PSP from eBay with a few games and a memory stick would not set me back too much. And I'm sure someone would have my 360 off me to counter act the spend. Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox 360, sony, sony psp, psp, fifa, fifa 2006, gba, gameboy, new york

TRON? TR-OFF!

I managed to get a copy of TRON from... er... somewhere and it's a great copy in widescreen too! I attempted to convert it to DVD using DVD Santa and got an "Unsupported video stream" error. Roxio 8 also decides to give me a cryptic "unspecified error" plus a load of hex to go with it! Fecking computers! So, it appears that the format of the file is one of those odd DivX ones that refuses to convert without a lot of hassle. I also downloaded DivXtoDVD too (after reading a few good things about it) and after converting and burning which took about 2 hours, the quality of the DVD is jumpy and the audio is about 3 seconds ahead of the video! Good job i've still got my old, modded XBox to watch it on over the network. On a side note, I have decided to post at least once per day this month in an attempt to kick start my blogging again. I failed yesterday though already! I was discussing a possible "april fools day" post with Swimpig over breakfast yesterday but nothing came of it. Technorati Tags: divx, dvdsanta, divxtodvd, tron, dvd, convert, blog, roxio, xbox,

TRON

This is the story of two worlds and the beings who inhabit them. One of these is our world, the one we can see and feel. The world of the 'Users'. It lies on our side of the video screen. The other, an electronic micro-civilization, lives and breathes just beyond our grasp. This is the world of the 'Programs'. Because we, the Users, have created this new world, part of us lives there, too... ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN I'm off to find this film this weekend!

Questions, Questions...

I see I have 2 questions in the comments of my previous post from fellow Blogger users regarding template design. So, rather than respond in the comments, here are the answers: Question from GVM:

You seem to be a blogger expert, even a very friendly one, would it be a problem to ask you the following ? - how do you adjust the size of the letters in the side bar, esp. the text in the About Me profile ? - where can one find the "search this site" button ?

To change this, you need to find the following line in your CSS code at the top of your template: #profile-container { } And change it to the following to make the font the same size as the main post body text: #profile-container {font-size:90%;} Make sure you do a full blog republish and if you don't see the changes immediately, press CTRL+F5 to force a full refresh of your page. The "search this site" button is actually built into the Blogger NavBar you see at the top of the blog. It just called "Search this blog" instead. The only problem with this is that it does not always pick up searches for new posts immediately. I had some posts that were over 3 weeks old that did'nt appear when I searched, but eventually they were indexed and it worked ok. You can always try Google Sitesearch too. Question from Tarun:

Different background for different posts intersting.tell me how to do it.

Well. That sounded more of a curt instruction really Tarun! But here's the answer. To do this, you will need to use some Javascript code which sequentially adds 1 to a variable or takes it away for each post and then assigns a CSS property to the post depending on the value. First, you need to add the following lines to the CSS style area of your template. This is usually at the top of the template code, and will be enclosed between the </style> and </style> tags. div.post-even { background-color : #F5F5F5; padding: 5px 15px; } div.post-odd { padding: 5px 15px; } Then, on the line just before the <Blogger> tag, I inserted some Javascript to zero the variable we would use. <script type="text/javascript">var evenodd = 0</script> And on the line just after the <Blogger> tag, I inserted some more Javascript that determines if the variable "evenodd" is 0 or 1 and applies the relevant CSS DIV to the post. <script type="text/javascript">if(evenodd == 0) {document.write('<div class="post-even">');var evenodd = 1;} else if(evenodd == 1) {document.write('<div class="post-odd">');var evenodd = 0;}</script> And that's it! I actually made mine a little more complex by adding a gradient image to the bottom of the post in the CSS bit: div.post-even {background-color : #F5F5F5; padding: 5px 15px; background: #F5F5F5 url(http://static.flickr.com/39/81719143_e19cdc7865_o.jpg) bottom left no-repeat;} Hope this has been some help to you both. I am in the first stages of a new "project" that will encompass many similar requests - so watch this space.

Airwalk: RIP

Yesterday, I finally laid to rest my pair of Airwalk trainers. We have been together for over 10 years! During that time, my Airwalk and I have been through many changes, challenges and events:

• Worn on many skateboarding days.
• Learned to drive in them.
• Cycled to work in them.
• Ran three miles in them, three times a week.
• Worn on my Honeymoon.
• Worn at the birth of both of my children.
• Worn when I taught my Newphews to Skateboard.
• Worn on holiday in St Lucia, Dublin, France, USA.
• Worn to the top of the Empire State Building.
• Worn into the deepest, darkest caves in Cheddar Gorge.

I will miss them as all I have to wear now are my bright white NIKE running shoes. Farewell my friends... we were good together.