Ok, on further investigation it appeared that an over zealous “cut and paste” from the BBC website (the URL oddly enough) brought with it some insane div tags which weren’t properly nested. This in turn, adjusted the natural flow of the page and made the “sidebar” content become part of the main page content.

In IE this had the effect of moving the sidebar to the bottom of the page, FireFox had the decency to do this as well as removing the background image. Nice.

Still, solved now.

Despite the optimisim of previous posts (for example http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/12/css-oddnes-solved/ ) it seems the almost random effects of the CSS / XHTML here are continuing to go all over the place. Sadly, I still have no idea why this is happening or what can be done about it.

I think a new theme is called for.

Judging from the news headlines, it seems that the ID card bill has been passed by the house of commons. Quote from BBC website:

Ministers have won a Commons vote making it compulsory for people to be given ID cards – and put on a register – when they apply for passports.

Well, it seems like a back door attack on what was once considered a “right” of the British People. Oddly I fail to see how this would make anyone in the country any safer? Would it have prevented the London bombings in July? Did we need these measures to prevent the IRA (were they even seriously considered even when the IRA mortared 10 Downing Street?)?

Interestingly, lots of other countries do have compulsory ID cards – Spain for example – and has it shown any effect in reducing identity theft of preventing terrorist attacks?

I suspect the answer is no.

Sadly, as previously mentioned, we are in a brave new world now. With each passing month there are new laws (no religious jokes for example) which limit our ability to express ourselves (not really a “right” as we dont have a bill of rights per se in the UK)

Looks like it could be time to emigrate.

Well, it starts today on Sky (which I dont have and wont get…) so it seems like I am going to have to wait for the boxed DVD set (again). Feel free to let me know how it goes 🙂

Well, as previously mentioned (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/02/11/css-oddity/) there seemed to be a few problems with how the stylesheet for this blog actually presented the pages.

As CSS seems to be the bane of my life, I was resolved to trying various tricks and hack to get it working but no matter what, it always seemed to be a case of working in either IE or FireFox (never both, and rarely FireFox…) which was annoying to say the least. Continue reading →

I am not sure why, but the CSS for this blog seems to have grown a mind of its own. In the two weeks I have been away something has changed and now (in firefox) it wont show the background colour in the main page (but will on message pages) and in IE, the menu bars on the right fall to the bottom of the page.

Very odd and may result in a new theme soon.

Well, it looks like the 5th season of 24 will be starting in the UK on, or around, 12 Feb. Almost wish I had Sky TV. (Can wait until the DVD box set comes out though)

Well, continuing the rampage against SEO and the companies that provide these services – today I stumbled across http://www.submitplus.com/ (note: although they do offer an affiliate service we dont have an account there and this link is without any refid or similar. Clicking it will not generate anything for us). Continue reading →

Well, daring question I suspect.

For the last couple of years Google has reigned supreme in the arcane world of search engines. For most new websites “getting listed” on Google is the number 1 priority and, helpfully, the Mighty Goog offer lots of services to assist. (Sitemaps, stats tracking etc.) This is backed up by an almost relentless SEO industry in which business will either lie (guaranteed placing in Google) or be honest and admit they can offer nothing of value.
All well and good.  Continue reading →

Well, as previously mentioned I had planned to install a few server OSes on the windows 2003 server and the linux box. Well, thanks to a variety of work related issues I havent managed to do that yet. However I did try to manually instal apache on the Windows XP box.

I say try.

For some insane reason the installation was beset with problems. This is something which, on Linux, is easier than picking your nose. On my windows XP machine it was harder than putting a man on Mars. The insanity that comprises our SOHO network continues unabated.

I think the ideal solution will be to reformat every PC and do complete re-installs of everything. Makes you want to cry really….

Excellent, and interesting resource on Physics – http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ – well worth a visit.

Living over here in the UK, it is far from easy when it comes to finding out about new TV series. Does anyone know if there is going to be a new series of 24 this year?

Just to give people a heads up – there are some amazing photos of medieval british castles available at www.etrusia.co.uk. I honestly think that our cultural history is something we, in the UK, seem to neglect and are almost embarrased about. This should not be the case.

To steal a quote – why dont you take some time out and learn about the history of Britain 🙂

Sadly it seems the whale that spent the last few days sightseeing London has died on the way to the open seas.

You can read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4635874.stm

May I be the first to propose a minutes silence to mourn the passing of such a remarkable mammal.

Well, after the mini rant over XAMPP I had a think. At the moment the set up here is: two machines running Windows XP, one Windows Server 2003, two with SuSE and Ubuntu – with a solaris machine any day now. Now, while XAMPP has been great in the past there is no real reason why I cant bite the bullet and remove all the webservers from all machines (there are lots of obscure ones running in the background – dont ask me why….) then actually install the servers I want, with the mods I want for the network as it is right now! Continue reading →