Raiméis

Another reason to love Gmail. I don’t often check the “New Features” page but did today and was delighted to read that I can access my other email accounts through gmail i.e. gmail will essentially act as your email client and import your emails from other pop accounts.
As well as it simply being dead practical to check all your mail accounts in one place and to be able to send mails identifying yourself as one of these mail accounts, you also have the benefit of Gmail’s spam filter which is far superior to that found in Thunderbird. I set up 4 mail accounts in Gmail earlier (5 is the limit) and of the 1200 odd spam mails which came from my domain email accounts all but 3 mails were caught by the Gmail spam filter. Thunderbird barely catches half these days. So for the time being Thunderbird is sidelined.

Staying on a tech subject … Firefox. One of the very few things which always annoyed me about Firefox was when viewing the source code it would open Firefox’s built-in viewer rather than Windows Notepad which is a dead handy program when you want to make a quick change to a page you’re working on. Just recently I found this handy bit of information: just type in about:config into your address bar. Ctrl+F and search for view_source.editor.external. Change it to true. Then search for view_source.editor.path and change the address to the full address of the editor you want to use (HTML-Kit, Notepad 2 or whatever). Dead handy.

Apologies for the lack of activity recently, including responding to your posts. I’m a miserable aul cunt, you can say it.
Truth is i’ve been up to me hairy eyeballs recently. Besides work and besides trialling various project management/personal organiser programs, i’ve been taking a few online courses in various web design related subjects, SEO & Photoshop being the two main ones. I’ve also been working on a couple of sites which I hope to release soon(-ish). On top of that i’ve been struggling to figure out how to do port forwarding on this fucking “Smart” Telecom router so I can access my own PC from the web.

So outside my sad little world what has happened recently …. United beat Lille tonight, victory is always sweeter when you leave the opposition so pissed off they walk off the field before the end of the game … gifted! Britney’s gone bald. And back into rehab. As has Robbie, gone into rehab I mean, he still has his hair as far as I know. The inquest into the death of Cynthia Owen’s baby back in 1973 has resumed. If ever there was a family that defines the word tragedy it’s that poor family. Irish was used officially used for the first time, since it became an official EU language in January. Good man Seamus Murray. The US has drawn up Iran attack plans. Sure of course they have. Ireland took on and lost to France in the first rugby game in Croker. Cracking game though. Dervish will sing “They can’t stop the Spring” in this year’s Eurovision song content in Helsinki. The song needs a bit of work to be honest. It’s the year of the pig. So eat like fuck is the general message.
That brings us up to date I hope. Happy New Year!

Kinda sad to hear that Anna Nicole Smith aka Vickie Lynn Hogan died today at the young age of just 39. She lead a shory but pretty interesting life. What a hottie she was when she was younger.

Official Website.
Wikipedia page.

Pathetic. Abysmal. Sickening. Miserable. Wretched. Deplorable. Shameful. Awful. Terrible. We thought it couldn’t get any worse than Cyprus, it just did. I refuse to watch another Republic of Ireland match until Steve Staunton is replaced as manager and our players learn something about the pride of playing for one’s country!

Thought this was very good, just had to post it…

I started using an application recently called Netvibes, which is much like Google’s personalised homepage … only better. It’s really cool, it’s ” a custom made web 2.0 home page solution” where you can build your own personalised page; you can store your blog feeds, check the news headlines, create a to-do list etc etc.

This idea of having a centralised page is nothing new, such apps have been around for years. The first one I came across was called “Start Page“, created by a very talented programmer Zoltan Milosevic. Actually based on this idea I tried to create a comprehensive script to act as a central start page or control panel with which I could manage all my web activities, emControlPanel ’twas called. This was back when I was learning PHP, the code was a bit rough but it had some good functionality. I had a tab for control panel links i.e. links to the various scripts & applications I control my domain with, a tab for bookmarks, one of a code database where i could save code snippets, one for a scratch pad, another for a half-nifty to-do list and one for a quick email application. There was a search feature where you could search the web with one of about 15 search engines plus it was easily skinnable and localizable. I’m a bit biased here but it was a half decent application. Unfortunatly the code was so dodgy that I never finished it or released it.

The sad thing is it’s been sitting for a couple of years and is now obsolete. Especially in this age of RSS, Ajax and other fancy acronyms. Any such applications would need to be shit hot like NetVibes or there’s nearly no point releasing them. It would be nice to resurrect it so if you’re an Ajax programmer stuck for something to do just give me a tinkle.

Since Santy was such a miserly cunt this year (ok, he wasn’t really) I decided to buy myself a couple of prezzies.

The first is a book on CSS: CSS Mastery by Andy Budd. I am striving to become a CSS Master, at the moment i’m more of a CSS Padawan and have some more learning to do before I achieve Master status. CSS, as you may know, is handy enough to learn but mastering the technology, especially when you need to design for different platforms & browsers, it a little trickier.
I’ve just read a chapter and a half and today and I am mightily impressed so far, i’ve learned a shit load already. I must do a proper review at some stage.

The second thing I bought is a new PC. The poor aul laptop is on her last legs. Whether it’s the effects of the tea spill over a year ago which destroyed the keyboard and god knows what else, the fact that she’s full to the brim with all classes of dodgy programs, that she’s being used as my test server, the general effects of age or the simple fact that i’m running windows i’m not sure but she’s pullin and dragging along here and I reckon she hasn’t long left in her, poor aul yoke.
So I just got myself a new Dell, a Dimension E520, 2.13 Ghz, 2Gb Ram, 320Gb hard drive, 19″ monitor, it should do the trick. The only drawback is that I get a free upgrade from XP to Vista. Eh, thanks but no thanks. I’ve been putting it through its paces so far and she’s a flyer, Call of Duty has never looked or ran better. Anyway back to killing Nazis, cya.

Happy new year to one and all, yeze crazy folk. I hope 2007 will be a good one and that we (at least me, sorry) win the lotto, can quit the day job and spend the rest of our lives doing whatever makes us happy.

I’ve no idea what 2007 will bring (obviously, otherwise I’d be Clair Voyant, which would be bad, I look awful in a dress believe me) but I’ve decided after watching a Tommy Tiernan DVD the other night that I want to be a stand up comedian when I grow up. Failing that an astronaut. In the mean time I suppose I’ll stick with what I’m doing at the moment which is being as unproductive as humanly possible.

But who knows what lies ahead … 2007 might be the year that life takes one of its weird unpredictable turns; you might come up with a killer business idea which makes you a small fortune or get an opportunity to follow a new exciting career path, you might decide to go back to college or head off to Africa with Concern for a year. Or perhaps you’ll even go into politics, it happens.
On the other hand it might be one of those years you hope speeds by and becomes nothing but a hazy memory. Let’s hope not.

Whatever 2007 brings may it at the very least bring health and happiness to all Irish people and friends of Irish people and fuck everyone else. Sonas agus séan don athbhliain!

Just discovered via Sly Bald Guys, this is The Beerbelly, quite possibly the best product ever invented … in the world … ever, as good as if not better than the wheel, the light bulb, sliced bread and the internet! I can’t wait until next Christmas, gotta get me one of these now.

You, An Post, are fucking muppets. How hard it is to deliver a letter? Not very fucking difficult at all, in fact the address is written right there on the front to make it easy for you, you muppets.

Here’s my problem. I ordered a package on the 7th December, it was shipped from the UK on the 9th then went missing. A replacement package was sent on the 19th and also went missing. Another package ordered on the 15th has also gone missing. On top of that we are receiving mail which is not even addressed to us. We live at 25 Something Estate (the estate with the big sign at the entrance which says Something Estate on it) and received a letter addressed to 25 Someother Road. We put that letter back in the mail and a day later it arrived back here at 25 Something Estate. Muppets! The letter went back in the mail again with a wee message suggesting that the postman/sorting department invest in a new fucking pair of glasses and a map.

Concerning the lost packages I checked the An Post website to see if I could find some information there which might help me. Christ, who the fuck wrote the content for the site? Did you ever check the FAQ? Written by a fucking master muppet it was. Here’s some snippets.

I have a problem with deliveries
– If you receive mail one day but no mail the following days (when you are expecting mail), there may be a straightforward explanation. Not everyone receives mail every day. Fucking genius, I tell ya.

My mail is delivered to the wrong address

– Problem: Your mail is correctly addressed, but sent to the wrong address
– Solution: If your mail is correctly addressed but is being delivered to one of your neighbours instead, please let us know. We will ensure your local Delivery Services Unit is told about the problem. That’s a fucking solution?? What if the mail is disappearing altogether?

– Problem: Your business mail was sent to someone else
– Solution: If it is inconvenient for you to collect the mail yourself [You expect me to do your job?], please let us know and we will send somebody to collect it for you. If you couldn’t deliver it right the first time how the fuck will ye ever find it and get it to me?

I emailed Customer Service about tracking down the packages, you think they could offer some help? Not a fucking chance. I’ll head down to the parcel office tomorrow and kick up a fuss, maybe pull out my samurai sword and cut up some postal workers.