Best. Denied Connection. Ever.

195.77.169.3 - - [29/Aug/2003:17:24:31 -0300] "CONNECT 1.3.3.7:1337 HTTP/1.0" 400 449 "-" "-"

While I get annoyed at people trying to probe my machine for proxies, the fact that this guy is using an IP of 1.3.3.7 (and corresponding port) amuses me to no end.

Update: I got bored and did a bit of searching on it.  As I mentioned previously, the CONNECT bit means that someone's trying to find an open proxy on my machine.  Why exactly it's being done seems to be up in the air at the moment, but some sources reckon it's the same people (using compromised machines) that used to try and tunnel through to port 25 on a bunch of mail servers.  The thing with CONNECT being that the address doesn't have to exist, it's the status code (in this case 400 - Bad Request) that's important.

"To wake the lazy war with trumpets' loud alarms"¹

If the weather co-operates tonight then I should get to take a peek at Mars using UNB's telescope.

If not, I suppose that these pictures will have to do.

¹ Virgil, The Aeneid

Update: So, I get there at 10:30 and sit through a 45 minute presentation that made me long for some of the undergrad classes I had been forced to take.  Then they tell us that people who had been there earlier had been given slips of paper with a time on them, and that if we didn't have a slip we'd have to wait until a free time spot opened up.  (Slips? There was nothing in the announcement about needing slips.)  The earliest time available? 01:30.

…And the number 3.

I've always been of the opinion that this Penny-Arcade comic was inspired by this one.

Well, it now has a sequel.

On a related note: I'm so tempted to buy the poster.

Oh, and finally: *Andrew dances the "I just got a cheap graphics tablet" dance of joy.*

That is all.

Site Statistics

Fooling around with analog, trying to get it to ignore certain visitors (i.e. me), and certain files (i.e. ones that only I access).  I did find some interesting information though. For example: since August 11, I've had two page requests using Safari, 5 referrals through google.com, 5 through google.ca (one or two of those may have been me), and 1 through google.fi and google.be.

As for the google hits, I figured I'd put up the search words people are using (I've lumped ones that include 'cache' into the larger category):

   4 referrals: pictures august 2003 blackout from space
   2 referrals: this space intentionally left blank
   1 referral : mod_dosevasive
   1 referral : hp pa risc motherboard power connector
   1 referral : timber billy hickey
   1 referral : movabletype speedycgi
   1 referral : signs of failing motherboard
   1 referral : itâ%80%99s wrong to wish on space hardware

It would seem my ramblings about computer stuff are getting me hits from people looking for information on various hardware and apache issues.  (Although those blackout pics definitely helped too.)

If you want to take a look at the stats, feel free. They should (at least temporarily) be located here.

Update: I've still got people coming to this site looking for the pictures. Since they've now been bumped off the main page, you can find them here.

Watch The World Turn Day-Glo

How cool is this?

The relevant questions being:
How far back does it go?
What all is archived?
What format will it be in?
And most pressing of all, when can I get my hands on it?

(On the other hand, how absurd is this? Can you say 'frivolous lawsuit'? Good… I knew that you could.)

At Least I'll Get My Washing Done

I should never be allowed to go to Chapter's with Nancy again.¹
For the second time, we spent about 2 hours there and I walked out ~$50 poorer.²  I did manage to avoid coming out another $110 dollars poorer by having enough self-restraint to put down 'Life of Pi', 'The Wars', and 'Programming Perl' (I do want to buy it eventually, though. I really want to shore up my disappearing perl knowledge.)

However, I now have a total of 10 books (9 if you remove 1066 and All That, which I'm almost done) that need to be finished.  Considering that two of them are over 800 pages long, I'm thinking that I could be reading these for a while.
For the record:

• Coraline
  
• Watership Down
  
• Through The Looking Glass
  
• The Long Goodbye
  
• Heart of Darkness & The Secret Sharer (I suppose that technically this one counts as two…)
  
• Don Quixote
  
• Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
  
• The Great Gatsby
  
• Ender's Game

¹ I should point out it's not Nancy herself that's the problem, it's going into Chapter's with someone else who likes to browse and is willing to spend that's the problem.
² At least this time it wasn't all spent on books from the children's section.

Bloody 'ell!

g026r@hermod:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$ sudo rm test *
rm: cannot remove `test': No such file or directory
g026r@hermod:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$ ls
g026r@hermod:/usr/lib/cgi-bin$

This is why you shouldn't write up test scripts in your main CGI directory, folks.
Expect the page to look a little wonky for a while, since I'm not going to bother trying to fix it until tomorrow at the earliest.

Update: Everything should be working again.  Thankfully most of the scripts were just variations of the same thing.  I think I actually managed to fit a few extra SpeedyCGI improvements into them too.
All I can say is that I'm glad it was just stuff like this, and not like a certain friend of mine who managed to type rm * .class a few days before the assignment was due.

Until Tomorrow, But That's Just Some Other Time

So I've made up a list of what I want to do with this server before I head away for some vacation in September.

First things first, I want to finally finish tweaking the stylesheet for this site.
I think I've got the hang of it, but there still exist a few irritating IE problems related to the left menu.
I might just end up making the <link rel="stylesheet"> tag on the affected pages refer to a SSI that spits back a slightly different file name if IE is detected.

The next thing I want to do is get mod_ssl installed and working.  The former isn't a problem, but the latter has always eluded me.  More importantly, I want to get it working and understand what the hell I did to get it working.  Following some guy's step-by-step instructions are no good if you don't know what you're doing.

Finally, I need to come to a decision as to what machine I'm going to permanently run this on.  I've got three machines that this could run on once they're all in working condition again: heimdall (180MHz PPC604e w/108MB RAM), hermod (400MHz Celeron w/64MB RAM), and skoll (dual 50MHz SuperSPARC w/48MB RAM)

There's probably more stuff related to this site, but that's all I can think of for now.  Got any suggestions?

Roll Me Under New Madrid

Don't ask me how I got there, but somehow I ended up at a site about antique electric clocks the other day.¹  Either way, I couldn't help but notice a page labeled 'e_baY seller to English Glossary'² and my curiousity got the best of me.

I read through the page and couldn't help but think "Hmmmm… This seems familiar."  I mean, I've never even searched for, let alone bought an electric clock; yet somehow their was an air of familiarity to the list.  Then it hit me, I'd seen some of this stuff before while browsing through various proprietary models of computers.³  The only thing was, some of the translations supplied made no sense if taken into consideration while browsing a computer listing.  So I took it upon myself to create an ebay seller to English dictionary for people who were browsing for computers.

It's a continual work in progress⁴, but they're all based off of actual item description's I've seen with me pulling translations out of my arse interpreting the phrasing into everyday English.  If I like the final result enough, I may even stick a permanent link into the sidebar.

So, without further ado I give you The ebay Seller to English Dictionary (Computer Buyer's Version)

¹ I said I have no idea how I got there… Sheesh, just never give a guy a break.
² I know that's hard to read but that's how the guy wrote it, not me.
³ Most notably Apple, Sun, and SGI. Occasionally NeXTs whenever I'm feeling particularly masochistic.
⁴ Which means you too can contribute! Just add your definition in the comments.

Site Updates

As you can see, the calendar on the left is now gone.  It seems a little blank without something at the top, so feel free to suggest any ideas.

Additionally, the New and Improved Ancient¹ and Mysterious Link of Randomness is now available. It's considerably more random than mod_random was (provided of course you don't click them too close together).  Clicking it too fast will trigger mod_dosevasive though, so if you click it a bunch of times and get a 403 page, that's why. In cases like that you'll be unblacklisted about 10 seconds after your last page request.

I found the strangest thing while writing that script.  It seems that Debian doesn't include CGI::Response in any of it's perl libraries.  They include CGI::Request in the main CGI library, but not Response.  This is despite the fact that according to CPAN this library hasn't been changed in almost eight years.  I know Debian is often slow to integrate new packages but that's just ridiculous, guys!

Finally, on a non-system related note, there's something about the phrase "You got your crappy sci-fi all over my fantasy RPG" that just cracks me up.

¹ I'm well aware that something can't be both new and ancient.  Just work with me here.

Three entries in one day; I think I need to stop writing for a while.

Stop Making Sense

You know that levy we pay on blank CDs? The one that's part of the law that makes it legal for us to copy a friend's music collection?
Well, what if that law covers P2P file sharing as well? There's some (possibly serious) flaws in this guy's argument, but it's worth a read.

As The Sci-Fi Lullaby Starts To Build

Sort of an entry for the sake of an entry here. Some info about the various Apache modules I've installed.

As I think I've mentioned a couple of times now, I went crazy with the Apache modules.
Here's my review of the ones I've tried:

mod_text2html: Takes text/plain documents and translates them into HTML documents so that URLs become links. Destroys any formatting that may be present in the file at the same time though. Not really worth it, in my opinion.
Verdict: Long gone.

mod_random: Not really that random. Clicking the 'Ancient and Mysterious Link of Randomness' multiple times in succession will give you the same link for a period of time, after which it will change to another link and repeat the process.
Verdict: If you want something closer to randomness you're better served by a script. Update: Gone.

mod_relocate: Wasn't really what I was looking for. To tell the truth, I'm having trouble figuring out who exactly would need something like this.
Verdict: Probably will be gone once I can be bothered to fix the links that refered to it. Update: Gone.

mod_gzip: Mmmm… Compressed transfers. I even found that there were some pages I could precompress and thereby save time transferring. (The stylesheet is an example. Mmmm… Auto-updating of precompressed pages.)
Verdict: If your website isn't made up entirely out of CGI scripts or server side includes then why aren't you using this?

mod_speedycgi: Speeds up perl scripts by running them persistently. Unfortunately there's some issues so not all scripts will run it. No idea how it compares against mod_perl either.
Verdict: Worth it, but be prepared to test every script to make sure it doesn't act all wonky.

mod-auth-useragent: Module for blocking requests based on user agent. I use it to block a variety of user agents I'd rather not have accessing my site. Has the advantage over mod_security in that parameter strings don't automatically become regexes. (i.e. the parameter "e" will only match a user agent of "e" with this module, while mod_security will match against any user agent that contains the letter 'e') The only downside is that you can't set it to match blank user agents. (But mod_security can!)
Verdict: Nice, small. Doesn't provide that much security but it's nice to have. Probably will stay.

mod_limitipconn: Limits the amount of connections per IP. This is only applied to the /files directory and there aren't enough files currently in there to trip it off anyways.
Verdict: Unknown

mod_dosevasive: Supposedly protects against minor DoS attempts by temporarily blocking offending IPs based on a set of conditions. I haven't been able to set it off yet, so I don't know how well it works.
Verdict: Unknown – and no, this is not an invitation to try it out. Update: Managed to trigger it when testing a new version of my random link script. Seems to work fine, although I may have to adjust the settings a bit.

mod_security: Allows you to define combinations of parameters that will be denied access to the site. Nice little module, but the parameters are a tad touchy at times – or maybe I just need to study the manual more.
Verdict: Worth it once I upgraded to version 1.6 and could tell it to log only offending requests rather than all requests. Definitely going to stay.

Also installed but as of yet untested are mod_xslt and mod_tsunami.

I've Got Silence On My Radio

How cool would this be if it was true?
No commentary now though, too damn tired.

<!--#include virtual="groveling_not_to_ignore_my_previous_entry" -->

My Hindsight Got The Best Of Me

I need to know something.

Have any of the 4 (maybe 5) people who actually read this ever listened to Godspeed You Black Emperor!? More specifically; have any of you, my faithful readers¹, listened to 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven'? Something about it is driving me crazy.

On disc one, track one (aka Storm), at between 11m30s and 12m00s (maybe a bit longer), is there a line in the arrangement that sounds almost like a slowed down version of Beethoven's 9^th Symphony? (More specifically the part of the 9^th that everyone always remembers.)

It's been driving me crazy, sometimes I'm right about these things² and other times I'm wrong.³ I just want to know that no, I'm not going crazy.

On a related note, Godspeed You Black Emperor! (or as they're now known, Godspeed! You Black Emperor) is great stuff. Excellent background music— I describe it as 'classical music for rock fans' to friends but that really doesn't do it justice. The previously mentioned album makes a great starting point. Give it a whirl, if you aren't completely satisfied I give you my Unconditional Money-Back Guarantee^{TM 4}

¹ When in doubt, flatter.
² See: Wilco's 'Outta Mind (Outta Sight)' and the Sesame Street theme
³ See: Far too many examples to mention
⁴ Unconditional Money-Back Guarantee^TM does not cover shipping, handling, packing, unpacking, duties, taxes, and various other sundry yet plentiful fees and tarrifs. Guarantee is only valid for residents of Canada. Guarantee is null and void within the following provinces and/or territories: NF, NS, PEI, NB, QC, ON, MB, SK, AB, BC, YT, NT. Some conditions may apply.^5
5 Look, I never said humour was my strong point, all right?

Take Me Away To Nowhere Plains

(Or: Why I Should Never Be Allowed Near A Listing Of Pre-Compiled Apache Modules)

Behold! The Ancient¹ and Mysterious² Link of Randomness!^{3 *}

Feel free to suggest any links you think would make a good addition as there currently aren't too many. I don't plan on making it open to direct submission via the web at the current time, although that may eventually change.

¹ Ok, it's not so ancient.
² Ok, it's not so mysterious either.
³ Well, pseudo-random anyways. 'The Rather New and Quite Ordinary Link of Pseudo-Randomness' didn't have quite the same ring to it.
^* Soon to be taking up residence in the left hand menu. Well, once I decide where to put it.

Stand Up Tall And Scream And Shout About It

In an effort to speed stuff up I've installed a bunch of Apache modules (more specifically mod_gzip and mod_speedycgi) and configured all the perl scripts to use speedycgi instead.

If there seems to be an improvement (or lack thereof) or there seem to be problems, let me know.
Unfortunately I can't use mod_gzip's precompressed archive feature, as it doesn't support server-parsed html pages. (Well, obviously…) The response time from that was just phenomenal, and with the proper options could have been made to auto-generate new copies of the archive when MovableType changed the page. Ah well, maybe some other time.

Some security related modules are being installed as well, they shouldn't do anything that messes with the ability of the server to run this site, but you never know…

Update: There seems to be a few problems involving scripts randomly generating HTTP 500 errors. They seem to be confined to the admin interface, but if you happen to get one just refresh the page and it will go away. I'm trying to figure out exactly why it does that sometimes, but I'm not finding many answers.

This is why it's not a good idea to add an update at 3:30 in the morning. My eyes have seldom seen such blatant abuse of the English language.

Update 2: I think I found the problem; it seems global variables maintain their value between execution using speedycgi, which can cause problems if the program assumes they're undefined. It's either completely rewrite those scripts or just set up Apache to execute them normally. Now, which one do you think I'm going to do?

Generic Title

The site was down for a while due to a brief power outage while I was at work and then me recompiling a kernel (and forgetting a module that left me wondering why I couldn't connect…) That's not important though, as I'm back and I have a request!

I'm looking for the contents of /proc/cpuinfo (as well as the output of uname -m) from any Linux machine that's not running on a x86 CPU. It's for a script I've been messing around with and any extra info would be greatly appreciated.

(Additionally, if anyone knows where I can get extra CPU info beyond the basic architecture information on Solaris or any of the BSDs as well as the format of the file it's in, I'd greatly appreciate that even more.)

Update: More specifially, I'm looking for data for the Hitachi SuperH, IBM S/390, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64 and CRIS.
Additionally, confirmation of the data I have for any others would be appreciated, with the exception of the m68k.
I suppose if I could find a Dreamcast keyboard I could get the SuperH readily enough…

Paper—Scissors—Rock Me Back To Sweet Serene

Spotted this over on Fark.
It's a contrast between what the North-Eastern United States looked like last night (on the right) and on a normal night (on the left)

So, without further ado: linky linky

Update: I've been informed that the left picture is roughly twenty hours before the blackout, while the right one is roughly seven hours after.

Update 2: These just showed up on Slashdot, so everybody's probably seen them by now.
Anyways, here's the big pictures: before & after

Three Times Me Made A Yardstick

I really hope no one's using IE to access this site for the next little while.
I think I may have solved my 'content div spans off the screen in IE' problem, but it's now causing some new problems.

No one else should notice any difference.

Edit: It seems to be working fine in IE 6.0 now. Only difference is that the spacing between elements is a little narrower than in Mozilla.
Still, as someone else said, IE users really should get a real browser.

Yes, that last one was a joke.

Edit II: The problem where I wasn't having a small gap at the bottom of this page (which affected all browsers) should also be fixed. Let me know if anything starts going all wonky.

We Are The Office Block Persecution Affinity

Grind grind grind — click! Grind grind grind — click!

Ah, the noises of a not-so-slowly dying hard drive. Made even more wonderful by the fact that this is the second hard drive to die this summer. Granted, the one that died in May was both 2 years old and one of the most infamous hard drives of recent years, thereby outliving it's average life expectency. Doesn't make my wallet hurt any less though. By comparison, this machine is running on an ancient 1 GB hard drive that hasn't shown any signs of failing (knock on wood).

Hopefully I can find the receipt for this thing, thereby enabling me to get a free replacement. Barring that, one good thing has come out of this, it will have finally gotten me to replace the CD burner that died at the same time as the first hard drive.

I'm Television Sick And I'm Television Crazy

Well, I now officially have a gripe against Apple.

7500 motherboard — virtually the same as the 7200 motherboard only the CPU isn't soldered to the motherboard.
7600 motherboard — exactly the same as the 7500 motherboard, only it now has a memory interleaving feature.
7300 motherboard — the same as the 7600 motherboard, only it's missing the video input circuitry. You can even see where the connectors for the video circuitry should go. Fits the same case and everything, no reason why it shouldn't be a valid upgrade path for owners of a 7200/7500/7600.

Oh, did we mention that the power supply connector had been changed? We're positive we mentioned that the power supply connector had been changed.

So, I now need to track down a power supply that was used in only one particular model of Power Macintosh despite the fact that it used the same motherboard as two previous models. Probably set me back another 30 USD.
Bah! Humbug!

See The Tidal Wave Of Disappointment

I'm calling for a stress test here.

I've written a script to dump the contents of a file out as a text/html stream and I want to make sure I've built enough checks into it to prevent anyone from using it to access files I'd rather they didn't.

Update (Aug. 16): Found a more efficient way of doing what I was using that for. So the file's gone. Don't bother trying.

The file is http://heimdall.shacknet.nu/cgi-bin/file.cgi and you call it with a parameter equal to the filename you want to access.
i.e. http://heimdall.shacknet.nu/cgi-bin/file.cgi?test would dump out the file called test. (Path names are all relative to a particular directory)

So, try and access files you shouldn't be able to, but please let me know if you succeed.

Oh, and I reitterate my point about IE being a P.O.S. browser that can't display anything properly. God this site looks ugly in it.

Black & White Is Always Grey

If the image in the top left is different when you visit this page at some point in the future, don't be surprised.
I've been experimenting with a variety of different title images and currently one of two will show up randomly.

Now, if I could just come up with a few more ideas—that and remember how to use random numbers in perl so I can stop using fortune to generate random text lines…

Edit: And before anyone asks – yes, that barcode would read 'thisspaceintentionallyleftblank' if scanned.
Edit the Second: Random numbers in perl are done using rand EXPR. Don't I feel stupid now.

Are You Amplified To Rock?

Here we go again!

First things first, I'm looking for a decent DynDNS client. My IP changed while I was out this weekend and since the client I currently have (addns) has caused me to be banned in the past it wasn't running – meaning that the DNS entry no longer resolved to the proper IP.

Secondly, if anyone knows where I can find a small 80 pin SCSI hard drive cheap, I'd appreciate it. The one in garm (I finally named the IIsi) is too small for Linux (160MB – I need space for /, swap and a MacOS partition to boot from) and I'm having some serious issues getting NetBSD to install (won't always recognise the network card).
And no, eBay is not a good answer.

Thirdly, I've gone on a bit of an Anton Fier kick as of late. I've managed to get my hands on the first Feelies album, as well the first Lounge Lizards one. I'd recommend the former to just about anyone, and the latter to anyone who's into more experimental jazz. I've also been trying to get my hands on stuff from the Golden Palaminos, unfortunately it's next to impossible to find anything that's not off of either the two albums with Lori Carson (This Is How It Feels, Pure) or Dead Inside.

Which brings me to point number four; I've come to believe that there's a little imp in my iPod that selects the songs when I put it on random. Either that or the device is sentient and has developed a sense of humour.
So what do I mean? First it seems to know where I am and just what songs I don't want to hear. As much as I like the artists stored on there there's quite a few I don't want to listen too while walking down a dark tree-lined path at 2 in the morning – and yet it seems to pick them all at that point.
Secondly, it likes to play songs that have some connection. Example: The Living End version of Standing In The Rain, followed by the Warehouse: Songs & Stories version, followed by the rather infamous bootleg version of Bob Mould forgetting the lyrics.

Fifthly, I've managed to pass the 100 mark in the number of movies I've watched from the IMDB top 250. Such a long weekend…

Sixthly and finally, here's a couple of links I've found useful:
ISO Latin 1 characters HTML escape sequences
W3C CSS2 Specification

Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me & My Monkey)

Right. It's random link time.

• Why does this seem familiar?
• Any 2 random webpages are (on average) 19 clicks away
• Madonna to publish a series of children's books. Well, it can't be any worse than her acting.
• I've got serious issues with calling this innovative. IBM's had mice with a raised button that does the same thing as a wheel and scrolls horizontally for ages now.
• More technology with the sole purpose of making my bank account shrink some more
• And finally, a blatant bit of self-promotion: Marvel at my first E2 entry not to get down voted into oblivian!

Don't Need No Politician, Tell Me Things I Ought To Be

Group exercise time!
I want you to sit back, relax, clear your mind and think hard.
Think up your top five all-time favourite male vocalists and then write them down here.

Ready? Here's mine:

5. (Tie) Bruce Springsteen (circa Born To Run) & Mike Ness (circa Cheating at Solitaire)
4. Frank Sinatra
3. Shane MacGowan (when he's sober enough to sing anyways, so pre solo career for the most part)
2. Leonard Cohen (post I'm Your Man)
1. Nick Cave (post Birthday Party)

(Honourable Mention: Scott Walker)

Is She Really Going Out With Him?

This is what happens when it's late, I'm at work, I'm bored (that's the important part), and I'm not in the mood to head home.

Laugh at the films I've never seen! Would you believe The Empire Strikes Back?
Marvel at the ones I have! I'm quite proud of The Third Man myself. The film's been out of print in North America for years.
Puzzle over why someone would spend so much time watching movies!

Come one! Come all! Step right up to see the marvel of the century!

Edit: I should point out that that's generated by a script. I didn't go and do all of those by hand. (Same with the counter on the right)
I may be bored but I'm not that bored.

Sing In Tune You Bastards!

Well, inspired by someone else's page, I've put back up a Yasis page.
Granted phpSysInfo is much nicer than Yasis, but I can't be bothered to install PHP right now. Combine that with the fact that Yasis only has major issues if it's taken off of the x86 platform, which seems unlikely at the current time, and I doubt I'll get around to replacing it with phpSysInfo for a while.
Edit: Just noticed that Yasis fails to report ISA devices. Maybe I'll get around to adding that if I'm ever in the right mood. And yes, I do need to work on getting the colours to look right there.

Anyways, real reason for posting this; I've decided to put up my word of the day scripts. They consist of two: one which runs periodically using cron and one which is run as a CGI script.

The one that's run with cron should be run daily at some point after 00:00 GMT-05:00 as that's when dictionary.com updates their WOTD page.
I personally use the following crontab entry:
30 2 * * * /path/to/work/dir/wotd.pl
Keeping in mind of course that I'm in GMT-04:00/-03:00 (depending on whether or not DST is in effect.)

The other one should be run using a server side include call, such as <!--#include virtual="/path/to/cgi/script" --> which will print the word out on the page.
Edit the Second: Apache users will need to have mod_include installed in order to use SSIs. thttpd users are SOL.
Edit the Third: Additionally, the file should end in the extension shtml for SSIs to work properly. (Providing you've set up Apache correctly that is)

Anyways, enough with the blathering already, here are the files:

• Cron script: wotd.pl
  
• CGI script: wotd-cgi.pl

Remember to fill out the variable names in both files, otherwise one won't run and the other will give you a rather fitting word of the day.
It's also your responsibility to do something with the word it spits out.
The webster.com search URI is:
http://webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=word
On the other hand, the dictionary.com URI format is:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=word

It's Wrong To Wish On Space Hardware

Internet Explorer is a pain in the ass. I've put my foot down and I won't be budged from this position.

No, it's not the PNG issue (which I've bitched about to other people before), but rather a layout issue.

I actually decided to take another look at my page layout in IE as the last time I did the entry on the main page had considerably less text. So, what do I find? Well, it seems that if too much text gets in this <div> tag then IE expands it off to the right, causing you to scroll, but at the same time it doesn't adjust any of the other <div>s, meaning that the bar up at the top doesn't continue when you scroll to the right.

Next time Microsoft, next time. *THUMP!* *MROAW!*

I Have Been Dancing In The Penny Arcade

So I've made three decisions:

1. I'm going to use a pattern for entry titles for a while (and no, I'm not going to say what it is just yet.)
   
2. I should put up something that isn't talking about my computers.
   
3. Barring that, I should cut down on how often I post entries. (Ok, so this is only number 4, excluding a few that came out still-born and never made it past the draft stage.) I'm thinking one or two a week unless I have something to actually say.

So, what am I going to talk about then? Well, to keep things from seeming to get too far-fetched, I'm going to talk about my all-time favouritest game in the whole wide world!

What? You expected me to give away the name in the intro? I think not!

 Continue reading I Have Been Dancing In The Penny Arcade

I Believe You Are In League With The Butcher!

I've decided to hope for the best and buy a 7300 motherboard. Wish me luck.

Additionally, a post that actually has some content should be posted sometime this weekend. Of course, this all depends on me being able to finish it in time, so don't hold your breath.