XSet is the personal website of Rob Dudley, a 29 year old software and web developer who lives in the Channel Islands...
// September 24th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
Well I got mine thanks to The Gir but if you still haven;t managed then you may want to try looking over at Spread Firefox.
You have to have a website sporting a Firefox button and you must not already have an account.
So get the best browser on the planet and a funky new mail account in one simple step…
// September 24th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
I’ve been a little concerned by the sheer number of stupidly large storms / hurricanes that seem to be hitting Florida this year. These things are doing a load of damage and killing far too many people and yet the world at large has been unable to come up with an explanation for this definitively inclement stretch.
Well I think this may have something to do with it!!!
// September 24th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
Hate – the fact that my Microsoft USB mouse crashes the install and the system at every oppouritunity
Love – that all I need is to use the USB – PS2 converter to solve the problem
Hate – I had ripped my system apart trying to find the hardware causing the install to crash
Love – the speed of the install itself – 13 minutes baby … count em!!!
Hate – trying to install drivers for none natively installed hardware – this is written in english … yet not
Love – that there are programs like Synergy available for free!
But most of all
Love – that I am one step closer to running in a Windows free zone.
// September 23rd, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
The past week seems to have zipped by in a mass rush of training days and work related goodness. We had another training session today – Project Management 101 – and so I got to leave a little early.
Hopefully I’ll have somethig worth reading posted tonight but I wouldn’t bank on it. There is a big guilt sign hanging over the EE interface at the moment as I have so much else on.
Right now to install Mandrake 10…
Laters
// September 16th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
And a wanted to share a number of recent observations:
(these are maybe worthy of individual posts but most likely not… plus I’m tired, on the eve of a very big day and am enjoying a glass of scotch)
I’m done.
Please feel free to continue the discussion in the comments.
Rob
// September 15th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
I’ve been holding off on recommending FireFox to my less techy friends on the basis that it is still pre release software. Yeah sure, even in this state it is more stable, faster and more secure than IE but I don’t recommend pre-release to anyone who doesn’t know what they are doing.
Well, the long wait is almost over. Mozilla have announced the release of the final pre release candidate of Firefox. It should only be a matter of weeks before the software is finally released in the long awaited v1.0 … then the battles start in earnest.
You see, I should imagine there are a very large number of people who are currently holding off on FireFox installs for any number of reasons. These include both home and corporate customers. I know for a fact that I would happily recommend the browser to any of our clients as soon as 1.0 is available.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Mozilla’s market share over the next 6 – 12 months. I’m predicting a serious spike…
Update:
Looks like weeks may be an over estimation. Various sources have the final ship date as being only a few days away!
// September 15th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
You all know who I’m talking about right? Belle de Bloody Jour? The most famous hooker ever to post on a weblog?
Well she’s shutting up shop…
// September 13th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
Just a quicky as I am swamped at the moment but I recently ran into a problem with my “other” webhost and sending email via PHP.
For those in the know there is a built in PHP function called mail() which handles very basic emails. It has some serious limitations though – no html email, no attachments and the one that got me – no facility to authenticate against the SMTP server. Now my webhost doesn’t allow annonymous email to be sent and so Authentication is required.
Enter PHPMailer.
This is an open source, freely downloadble class* for PHP. It offers a host of features to the serious emailer including all of those I mentioned above and a lot more.
Nicer still is the method of installation. Ideally it would be stuck in the include_path defined in your php.ini file but you can also register the class on a per page basis. This is ideal if you don’t have control of the server. I simply added the following line to the global include (this is a PHP file that I require at the top of every page. It normally deals with database connections and session state):
ini_set("include_path", ".:/path/to/phpmailer/dir");
And that’s it. Fully fledged email capability from any PHP app and it takes seconds to install!
I love it when a plan comes together.
*Classes are low level, global extensions to a programing language
// September 10th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
Summer seems to have finally arrived in Jersey and is making up for what it missed by being oppressive and nasty. So I’m gonna sit down with and ice cold beer, a database schematic and Bullet Proof Monk. Problem is I can only concentrate on two things at once …
// September 9th, 2004 // No Comments » // Personal
An article on the BBC website grabbed my attention last night. Basically those pesky safety campaigners are asking manufacturers of mobile phones to print the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of each model on the phone – kind of like the Tar / Nicotine breakdown you get on a pack of ciggies.
Now I really am not that worried bout the radiation my phone generates. I am a fully grown adult with a fully developed skull and I spend relatively short amounts of time on the phone … plus the booze and fags will kill me way before my mobile does!
What I found interesting was the link to the Mobile Manufacturers Forum website which contains detailed listings of the SARs of most modern phones. Given that the EU limit (and you can say what you want about the EU but they really do research these things very thoroughly) is 2 Watts per Kilogram I was amazed by the low levels of some phones.
Here (just in case you’re interested) are the SAR values for my previous 3 mobiles:
You can check the SAR of your mobile here.
*BOO HISSSSSS!!!
