weblog September 17th, 2005
So, I was looking at the grapefruit statistics the other day, and I noticed something. Do you know, less than 1% of you have screens that are 800px wide?
So, I thought, it’s a bit silly to keep Grapefruit so confined. Today I’ve put up a liquid layout for the site that will give you oodles of space. The sidebar’s a bit chunkier so if you do have a small browser window the content may seem a bit squishy but I think everything will be just fine.
Well, except in IE — there’s still some bugs to work out there, concerning a few floating things and such. Nothing too super ugly, but this does bring me to my second point.
26% of you are using IE. Stop it. If you’re reading this in IE, you’ll notice a useful little badge at the bottom of the page saying “Firefox”. Click on it. Install it. Be happy. Make me happy. Browse secure.
Anyhow, hope no one’s induced to vomiting again by the site changes. It’s so messy.
Posted by Tom Charman to website | 3 Comments »
weblog September 7th, 2005
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been away for a week and I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms. Especially since a massive newsworthy event happened over in the USA and they weren’t able to cover it. But they’re back, and I thought I should mention this for those of us not able to see it.
Given the recent crisis, reporter Ed Helms was considering how many major disasters the Bush Administration could handle before it actually suffered. A huge list was presented — the completed items were:
- Abu Graib
- Bin Laden
- Chalabi
- Deficit
- Enron
- Failure to find WMDs
- Halliburton
- Iraq
- John Bolton
- Katrina
But apparently, the Administration will not suffer politically as long as they manage to avoid at least one of these:
- Locusts
- Mars Attacks
- North Korea
- Osama and Jenna
- Pregnancy: Osama and Jenna
- Queer Revolt
- Rodents of Unusual Size
- Syrian War
- Tigers
- Unicyclists (nuclear)
- Voldemort
- WWIII
- X-rated tape: Osama and Jenna
- Yam Shortage
- Zero People left on Earth
I love this show. I’ve said it before, possibly on this blog, but Australia needs CNNNN (or someone else) to stand up and serve us the way The Daily Show serves the USA. It’s not like we haven’t cloned every other show they make, and it’s got to be better than our sketch comedy.
Posted by Tom Charman to jon stewart, tv | 4 Comments »
weblog September 1st, 2005
A few weeks back, I was checking all my nifty RSS feeds when I noticed that Whedonesque.com were announcing preview screenings of the Firefly movie, Serenity, in Victoria. I rushed over (in an internet sort of way) and booked me some tickets. Of course, the screening wasn’t in a sensible place like Southland or the Jam Factory; it was in Knox City.
I had a look on the Melways to see how far away that was. It didn’t seem so bad, I thought, but I was looking at the map of the whole of Melbourne, and nothing looks too far on that one. And so it was that we were still driving ten minutes after the preview screening was supposed to start. People who know me will have a good idea of how stressed I was, though it wasn’t showing as much as usual in my driving, I flatter myself (probably without justification).
My brother’s friends were already there, and making the sort of panicky phone calls that I would have been making had I been in their shoes. Everyone else was bagging them though so I joined in and pretended like I wasn’t a stressbag.
Knox City, it turns out, is arranged like a segmented fortress, and not every car park links up with the others. Cue more panicked driving, panicking, rushing about, until finally I run into the cinema, give my credit card, get the tickets, run up to cinema 2…
And find a queue a mile long, populated by a group of nerds ranging from our high-class level to 50-something fan-club presidents. The 50-something fan-club president was actually standing next to us in the queue and insisted on talking to us. Friendly, if somewhat irritating. Once we got inside we discovered that while the huge nerd contingent didn’t look huge, there were enough of them to make the cinema smell rather like a meeting of the Doctor Who Club of Victoria.
On the way in, a man swiped a metal detector over us a few times, and our phones were taken; thus disabling our cunning plan to record the film with camera phones taking 5 minute movies at a time. They looked at us suspiciously when we each handed in 6 phones but they didn’t say anything.
Posted by Tom Charman to film, Firefly, joss whedon | 4 Comments »
weblog August 29th, 2005
Yesterday I heard the absolutely splendiferous news that there’s a JB Hi-Fi opening in Southland soon! And then, of course, I talked to a bunch of people who already knew and hadn’t gotten around to telling me, but sometimes friends are just useless like that. This is the answer to one of my top ten prayers. Another, of course, is that the super-lame Collins Bookseller stores in Southland disappear and are replaced with a massive Borders store. I just don’t know where they’d put it.
I mean, I know where I’d put it. They’ve got a whole damn corridor of clothes shops on their second floor. That seems a bit extreme. Or maybe somewhere on the other (original) side there’s a place that isn’t being used efficiently. After all, I never go there, so it can’t be that useful.
Observant people will have noticed that the new look is spreading to the blog. Later this week when I have some more spare time I’ll be making all the swirl pictures here blue, in the manner of the pic on the left. This seems a good idea but I don’t know what colour to make the forum. Grey? Hmmm.
The final Doctor Who review for the 2005 season should turn up soon as well, for those who are eagerly anticipating. And, of course, a review of Serenity. Actually, the experience of seeing Serenity is worth a blog entry. If only I’d thought of that earlier, I could have spared you all endless Southland-waffle. But I didn’t! Bwa ha ha.
Speaking of maniacal laughs, it seems to have been confirmed that Anthony Stewart Head will not be playing the Master in Doctor Who‘s second season. Which is a shame, but as the episode will feature Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 it might have been considered a bit overcrowded anyhow.
Posted by Tom Charman to Doctor Who, tv | 7 Comments »
weblog August 27th, 2005
She started cutting the Marshmallows in half again today. A cost cutting measure that will redefine the hospitality industry. An approach that is so beautiful in it’s simplicity that cafe owners everywhere will wonder why they didn’t think of it first.
Such is the way with all great inventions.
Actually I’m sure there must be better ways to make more money. Ones that aren’t embarassing and reflect poorly on us. I mean people know they aren’t getting a whole marshmallow. The severed end dries up and looks mangy. Magnificent spongy balls of confection made virtually inedible.
We never confront her of course. Our main method of communication is forging entries for the suggestion box. Sometimes one of us will make a joke, but we make sure to say it quickly so it is beyond her ability to understand. It’s fair enough — they scream at each other in Chinese all the time.
In any case we’ll have to wait a while before we make use the suggestion box again. I think she was starting to recognise our hand writing.
And in something unrelated — people who fancy themselves as sophisticated really irritate me when they say the word “accessible” (in the context of music or and other art) like it’s some kind of criticism. Get over yourself.
Posted by Jackson Kearney to food | 3 Comments »
weblog August 21st, 2005
You may notice a subtle change on the grapefruit pages. Well, all of them except these weblog ones.
These bits aren’t done yet, I don’t have time at the moment. I’ve chucked up what I’ve done though, because I’m sick of only me seeing the cool stuff.
Hope you like it. I’ll be fiddling with it over the next few weeks (months?) and getting things just right, but this is a start. Now, bedtime!
Posted by Tom Charman to website | 34 Comments »
weblog August 17th, 2005
My brother picked us Serenity #1 for me today. A comic book. Haven’t gotten me one of those in a while.
I’ll be using the fact that comics look a bit like books to put any review I do or do not do of these comics in the books section of grapefruit, which is frankly a bit paltry and could do with beefing up, anyhow.
The trouble with comics, of course, is how quickly you can read them. I idly intended to read the first page or two and before I knew it I was half-way. Silly little things.
…
And a minute later, I’ve gone and finished it. Damn.
Posted by Tom Charman to books, Firefly, joss whedon | 1 Comment »
weblog August 11th, 2005
The more astute of you will have noticed the lack of a grapefruit redesign. It’s on it’s way, there’s just a few kinks to iron out. And, an acupuncture website to make, as Shannon is no doubt thinking when she reads this. Almost done Shannon! Here’s an update of some things that have happened to me recently, while the tumbleweeds roll past grapefruit.
- I’ve gotten roped into helping with yet another website, for EMS. If you like the design, don’t congratulate me; it’s just a theme that came with the Content Management System, Mambo. I did the picture though.
- I found a very nifty little Mac app, still in beta, called CoverFlow. It’s a way of browsing your albums stored in iTunes. When you move the mouse along the covers, they slide about, and you can flick through a bunch as if they were on a rack. Pointless but sexy. A better solution for the Mac and Music head perhaps is Clutter.
- I walked all the way to a tutorial, and then back along three blocks of La Trobe street today with my fly undone, and my hands in my pockets. What’s stupidest about this is that I noticed the fly issue in the tutorial, covered myself up, and then forgot all about it.
- I found this cunning solution to the scratching on the back of iPods the other day. Easier than some iPod modifications I’ve seen.
- In tutorial related news: I appear to be the wisest person in my English tute. This hasn’t happened before. I don’t know if I got cleverer or everyone else is slightly (and only slightly) sillier. I suspect that I’m more at home in the highly text-based analysis of Character and the Novel than with the historical perspectives of Shakespearean Worlds and Victorian Crime Writing last semester.
- I got home today to find an extension for my Computational Physics report on Quantum Mechanical Bound States. Yippee! And I was all stressed out. The lecture I missed this week is online, as well. I must have gathered some good karma somewhere.
Posted by Tom Charman to apple, university | 2 Comments »
weblog July 26th, 2005
No, really. I’ve just been… busy. I’ll get right on to all the things that need doing around here, very soon.
Posted by Tom Charman to website | 8 Comments »
weblog July 18th, 2005
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
- The ‘snap-to-grid’ guidelines do NOT include the surely obvious page margins. So, if you make one table (which defaults in size to the size of the page), and then make another and resize it, you have to hold down the Alt key to get it to line up with the one above.
- When using the Alt key to resize a table, often (but not always) the place you dragged to is not in fact where the table border ends up. In Word’s infinite wisdom, the line immediately next to it is far more preferable.
- Sometimes, resizing a table’s cells will cause the cell you resized to stay how it is, and the cells to the right to suddenly shrink. Attempting the same operation again will result in further shrinking. Sometimes the third time will actually resize the damn cell.
- Sometimes, clicking and holding on the border of the table does not allow you to move the table’s borders. And then it does. I think it’s trying to fuck with my head in this instance, rather than being innocently crap.
I just needed to get that off my chest. Er. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Posted by Tom Charman to microsoft word, software | Comments Off on Things I hate about Microsoft Word and Tables