We are all aware that the firefox users out there are the chosen children who will one day inherit the Earth.

However, from lookin at the webserver access logs for this site (and its “parent” at www.whydontyou.org.uk) it seems that nearly 65% of the firefox users hitting this page are still on version 1.0 of the program.

Currently Firefox is doing well in version 1.5 – I can see NO reason not to upgrade. You will get a better (IMHO) browsing experience and nearly all the extensions and themes work.

For those who still dont want to upgrade, please make sure you are applying all the security patches / fixes as they come out.

Naughty,
originally uploaded by Vicky and Doug.

Now this is funny. There are numerous people (mainly on USENET) who are obsessed with Albert Einstein and almost deify him (or demonise him – either way they obsess about him) and it is something I have always found odd.

This is old news, but I missed it previously.

Dell are offering workstations with linux pre-loaded. However, in some fit of corporate madness they are seriously overpriced. You can see the details of the workstations at Dell. The cheapest starts at US$759 but I assume that price will rapidly rise as you get the components you need.

One positive point though – the high end one can come with up to 16Gb of RAM – more than enough for most home users….

Now, as mentioned in the past, we are big linux fans and actually like the idea that linux is now being sold “pre-packaged.” However, this risks pricing it out of the market. It is cheaper to buy a windows PC and install linux (a free version) yourself and as long as this is the case, things like this from Dell are just martketting ploys.

read more | digg story

This is a digg entry leading to a blog page about tweaking .htaccess to achieve your ends.

It is very good. Like most things (this blog included) it is not perfect and you may well discover better / alternative ways to do things but for 80% of the population who need to mess about with .htaccess this will help.

It is quite serendipitous that I came accross this today as I was in the process of fighting with the .htaccess on a site I am looking after. While this tutorial hasnt been the perfect answer, it did help me notice a common mistake I had made which was causing the problem (embarassingly it was a case of me forgetting about inheritance!).

All in all – well worth checking this out.

read more | digg story

Ok, now we all know how some people dont mind making themselves look like the biggest Ãœber geeks on the net but here is some guy going further to acheive this than most. (see pic on right! :-))

Ignore the cheesy, geeky theme of this tutorial and you get an excellent bit of advice on how to do some great effects with photoshop.

Well worth looking at – it is just a shame about the guy thinking styles from 1956 are still acceptable (not to mention his toy lightsaber). He could have at least dressed up for the occasion. 🙂

read more | digg story

For some mad reason word press is inserting a random

tag in the posts from Flickr. I have checked the HTML source (doing an edit post) and there is nothing there, unless it is being inserted by Flickr somehow.

Anyone have any ideas what can be done?

As promised or threatened below, you can now read a couple of pages on Alfred the Great on the etrusia website. It seems he was pretty great as a guerilla fighter against the Dabes and reasonably great, by Saxon standards, in that he had social policies aimed at promoting peace, justice (in Saxon terms) and education.

However, in case saying this might amount to glorifying him as a resistance leader and would therefore contravene the new law, I will say that he seems to have been a reasonably good ruler and surprisingly long-reigning for a Saxon. See a list of Anglo-Saxon kings. Relatively few outlasted a year, in the face of strenuous attempts by their rivals to take over (assassination/banishment and so on).

Digg.com is a fantastic resource, easily one of the best places to find tech info and see what sites other people find interesting.

However, as with all things it is wide open to abuse.

For example this page – along with its spam-like title – is one of the most dugg items on the programming strand at digg.com. (see http://digg.com/programming for more info).

However, this page is FAR from the best regex site ever. It is little but a blatant attempt to advertise the commercial software. Despite this, it has LOTS of comments and hundreds of diggs.

As previously mentioned (on this blog), the problem with sites like this is that it is very easy (and quick) for the sites it represents (the ones people post) to become very polarised. If you posted a new link to a programming site for example, only the die-hard diggers would find it – most casual users would be left looking at the “most popular” ones on the front page.

That said, it may not be ideal but Digg.com is good….

read more | digg story

Just for information’s sake. The reason why there has been a sudden rush of posts with nice little pictures on the left is two fold.

First off, as we now have the history section, I thought it would be good to get some things in there, and there are some amazing photos available on Flickr.

Secondly, as Etrusia now has a flickr account and is uploading images, I thought it would be worth taking the chance to check how blogging from flickr works. For example, we are supposed to be able to “auto-blog” our pictures as they are emailed to flickr – this has not yet worked even once 🙁

Still the rest of the functions seem to be working fine.

Cardiff Castle,
originally uploaded by gtj-45.

Another excellent photograph from flickr – this time it is a stunning photograph of the main keep of Cardiff Castle in Wales.

The site of Cardiff castle dates back to Roman fortifications from around AD 60, but the more recent, and more impressive castle, was built during the time of the Norman / Plantagenet kings of England. This served as a base for the Norman knights to dominate the surrounding lands and enforce the Norman rule over the Welsh.

Sadly, Cardiff castle is not part of the Heritage schemes (National Trust, CADW etc) so, unless you live in Cardiff it costs a bit to get in.

Eilean-Donan1,
originally uploaded by photokarsky.

Very attractive castle in the Scotish highlands – it lies at the point where three Scottish Lochs Meet. It is that much of a well known, loved, castle that it has its own website – http://www.eileandonancastle.com/

Sadly, from a purely historical point of view, this is not a castle that has really seen service (compared to the ones further south for example) and is closer to the stately homes of rich nobles (Castle Drogo for instance)

Still Eilean Donan is a stunning building and very imposing. This photograph (from Flickr) is an excellent example.

Cornish Coast,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

A striking view over the Cornish coast, just south of Newquay.

This photo was taken on a very sunny day in January but doesnt quite catch just how blue the water was.

(This has been posted here to test the flickr integration with the blog)

Stonehenge – Ancient Stones,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Photos taken at Stonehenge showing the ancient stones against a cloudy background.

Although there are lots of debates over when the standing stones were assembled, it is fairly safe to say that this happened at some point during a 1000 (or so) year period centred on about 3000 BC.

Despite current beliefs (based mainly on Victorian mistakes) it is more likely that Stonehenge was used for mid-winter rituals than mid-summer ones.

This is probably the end post (following on from the ones I did earlier this week) on the paypal saga. I have tried repeatedly (short of phoning them) to get a straight answer to the problem. I have also tried firefox on other people’s PCs and it has the same issues.

It strikes me as if this is something firefox have no intention of resolving – to the extent that they think it is the customer’s fault.

The customer service we have allowed ourselves to suffer over the internet is nothing short of shockingly bad.

Paypal – shame on you. If this was an open market then I can promise I would never, ever use your services again.