Author: Rory

Let’s just gloss over, for the minute, the fact that I’ve not seemed to be around for the last week or so. Consider it a favour to my readership that I didn’t go into the finer points – or even a general mention – of solving the differential equation of traffic flow using the upwind method. It truly is as inspiring as it sounds.

And, on a topic similar to the exiting world of traffic flow, it seems a great service to the students of UCD has been removed. That is, the students who live to the south of the campus and commute by bus. The strategicly placed bump that undertook to wake every sleep-deprived soul on the approach to the main gate was paved over at the weekend. Attendance dropped significantly, while the number of groggy commuters waking up at Corn Exchange Place almost doubled. I’m considering starting a campaign to have the bump replaced. Who is with me?

Don’t worry, it’s just a joke. You get jokes don’t you?

Well, the web just became a little more… erratic. Witness the incoherence of Djinn solidified and crystalised into his own website. Don’t worry; we’ll get through this together…

Oh we all like to bitch about stupid online tests like How Long Will You Live? and Which Postmodern Feminist Zealot Are You? but when we’re put in front of an array of little circles we feel compelled to stick a tiny black dot in one of them. It is a defining dot; it determines who we are. One of the only drawbacks of broadband is its removal, or at least drastic abbreviation, of that glorious moment of anticipation after we click on ‘Submit’; that moment when we know that some random bozo’s cruddy website is about to tell us what defines us as people.

And so it was at the Blogger Code generator. My code is B4 d t++ k s- u f- i o+ e- l- c, which will magically decode with a simple click. It will tell you more than anyone could otherwise know about me.

Or maybe it’s just a stupid questionnaire.

I don’t like to just sit here and say "go there", but sometimes I know that someone else is going to entertain you more than I could hope to. In this case it’s Mark Pilgrim’s collapse into despair over bread-making, or the lack there-of. Go. Read. Enjoy.

Essentially this is nothing more than a reassurance, if anyone was looking for one, that I haven’t forgotten my plan to overhaul the ‘about’ section of this site. I’m just procrastinating. Which is an activity that, I’ve just realised, is much less painful then it sounds.

While you weren’t looking, the Mozilla Foundation snook out new releases of Mozilla Firebird (version 0.7), Mozilla Thunderbird (version 0.3) and the combined Mozilla Suite (version 1.5). Unfortunately the Mozilla Foundation no longer runs on AOL‘s servers, so a timed triple release has earned them a helluva slashdotting. The ftp server is fine, though, if you want to take a look at any of these applications. And I know you do.

More interestingly, at least to those of us who have already been using [Fire/Thunder]bird for some time, is the release of Open Office version 1.1. This suite is, quite simply, better than any other office application I’ve ever used. I won’t list features here — they’re covered in detail on the release page — but I have to say that the formula editor is the best thing to happen to office software since spellcheck. Combined with the option to export to pdf, this just makes it ridiculously easy to create scientific documents that anyone can read.

Developers seem to make much better stuff when they aren’t being paid for it. Perhaps we should consider not paying them at all?

I don’t like to draw undue attention, at least online, to my frankly appalling degree of apathy; even if it is a defining characteristic. However it seems recently that the subject “Gotta Post Something, ‘Cause I Haven’t in a While” is the one I can most comfortably post under. There follow a few limited-appeal entries on diverse topics (I have a few in mind, but I don’t know how many will keep my attention long enough to type them.)

Thunderbird is nearly finished downloading several hundred emails, no doubt all spam. Most of them have been sitting on the server for days or weeks, since my address was harvested from Usenet. I’m making one final effort to reclaim my old @esatclear.ie address from the dreadful deluge. I’m confident the bulk of the recent spam has subsided, hopefully down to about 20 messages a day which I can easily handle.

I keep the address only for continuity. A great many people have it, though most will never have reason to use it; and it’s attached (with the associated ill-effects) to numerous Usenet messages. As I’ve said before, and indeed is suggested in my ‘contact’ page, I would prefer if people would use any @soylentred.net address to contact me.

Who would have thought that @hotmail.com lasted longer than @esatclear.ie?

Every time I break down the third wall and spout about the changes (few of late) that I’m making to scatterbrain, it gets a little easier. So in the knowledge that published roadmaps are a great motivator, I’m going to lay out a few intended changes.

Apparently it’s not entirely clear to new readers what in the blue hell is going on around here. Each entry is unrelated to the last and there is nothing permanent to tell people what it’s all about. And there’s the key word, isn’t it? About. Currently the ‘about’ section of the site consists of a single, somewhat cryptic, page describing me. It contains no attempt at a description of the site’s purpose, or of why one would want to read it. Compounding this is the difficulty in finding the ‘about’ page. It merits a single link, unadorned, squashed in a list.

So onto the plan. The main page will feature a box in the sidebar, above the internal navigation and linkroll, differently coloured and containing a short explanatory text and a link to the ‘about’ section. The main ‘about’ page will explain and link to three others:

• One, similar to the current lone page will describe me. It will likely still include the text written by stephen. It will also likely feature more input from me, including a revised introduction.
• The next is probably the most important. It will be a ‘what the hell is going on?’ page, describing what the site is and how to read it — how to find the archives, how to comment, how to link to entries.
• I have intended to write a basic technical introduction to the site for some time. A desription of scattebrain, how the site is built, the structure of the site. This page will be for other web monkeys who might be interested to see my approach.

Unfortunately UCD computer services and netsoc both seem to be repelled by the idea of offering proxies for ftp or which don’t block all but port 80. In English: I have great difficulty administrating this site from college. Otherwise the changes would be in place and this entry would be ‘Check out the blue box. Cool, huh?’

I realise I’m a little behind the times, but if there’s anyone else who hasn’t seen it, here’s a direct link to the LotR:RotK trailer(~27MB, Quicktime). If you’re in UCD, you can get it from this temporary mirror.