So now LJ puts mouse-over crap on links you add, like this: http://www.google.com ?

:(

UPDATE: Go to your LJ view settings here RIGHT NOW and turn off the "Graphic Previews" option. This will get rid of this foul scourge :D

(thanks to this post, which a bit of searching led me to, for the tip)

Having tried Opera 9.5 alpha a while back and discovering that it didn't work with Google Reader, I gave up for a bit :) Now that 9.5 beta is out, I thought I'd give it another go, and lo and behold it works on Google Reader! Hooray!

My main reason for even bothering is that all the news about Opera always goes on about how it uses less memory than other browsers and it's much quicker and so on.
I have to say, so far it's all been rather positive :D It's sooooooooo much faster than Firefox that the few things which are annoying me about it at the moment seem pretty insignificant :)

Things I need to see about getting working better:

- AdBlock doesn't exist for Opera 9.x, so I now get to see how jammed full of ads the intarweb is nowadays on a lot of sites (a subject for a later rant, I think). I have a privoxy (formerly junkbuster) proxy at home which gets rid of a lot of this stuff, and there's a pretty good "block content" thing in the newest Opera but it's in need of a huge list of rules to get rid of stuff. Also, the built-in stuff doesn't get rid of stuff that AdBlock will, like CSS-based gumph and having flash always blocked until you click on it or something.

- Fonts seem a bit random at the moment, and sometimes look pretty nasty. My font selections seem to be ignored on some sites, but I can't find where to set them so that they are forced rather than using the fonts set in the CSS from the site.

- Getting numbered links on google searches (something that I had a firefox extension to do), so that once I've done a search I can hit a number and jump to that result rather than clicking.


I didn't like Opera in the past, but I think they've fixed an awful lot, and firefox seems to be getting bigger and bigger and slower and slower :o

Try it, you might like it!


[Post not sponsored by Opera, despite the overwhelmingly positive tang]

According to :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7081038.stm

..it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

Maybe this is why Ming Campbell quit; you wouldn't want any troublesome litigation after your death now would you? :P

Just a test to see if posting from Lifeblog on my phone to LJ works ^_^
Pictures don't work this way though, so I'll have to upload them to Flickr and link them to here (a huge faff on a mobile if you don't have something to do this for you).

Sat 12/05/2007 21:23 12052007043 Tanzen!

And so after our tenancy ran out on our old place on the 26th of March, today we got our deposit back without any prompting whatsoever, hooray :P

After moving from Exeter to Brissol at the end of June last year, I tried prodding the rental agency I was renting from there (Weekes Estate Agents) to send me back my 400 quid deposit somehow. They muttered about contact details and stuff, and I sent them some stuff and didn't think any more of it. Then several months later I remembered that nothing had appeared in the post or my bank account from them, and started pestering them to send me my money back. I got told that they didn't have my contact details, so I sent them again.

Some more time passed and nothing, so I started calling them more often. I was fobbed off with stories of the only guy there who handles the deposits not being available, them not having any contact details for me, or just general ignorance. Of course, this was interspersed with them saying they'd call me back, or get person N in their office to call me back, and I don't remember them actually calling back at any time (at least not with anything useful or conclusive).

Eventually I sent a threatening letter, saying that I'd take them to the small claims court if they didn't give me back my deposit, and they seemed to take a little notice of this and started actually claiming to have sent me a cheque for the amount (although over 2 weeks after I sent the letter). This mystery cheque never arrived, of course, I expect because they never sent it.

Then they said that they wanted to get it all sorted and they would BACS transfer me the money straight away. A week later the money hadn't appeared in my account, so I called them to hassle some more, and suggested that I (or someone on my behalf) could collect a cheque from their office in person. They said "ok", which immediately brought to light that they hadn't even attempted to transfer the money, or they'd be chasing where that had disappeared to.

Anyway, so the lovely Becky went to their office and extracted a cheque from them (and a refusal to pay for her train fare to get there), and paid it in quick before it disappeared into the magic ether that cheques from them apparently get sent to moments after they are written.

9 months after they should have given me the deposit back they have finally done so.

I heartily recommend NOT renting (or buying, as they do sales as well) from them if you want competent, friendly customer service and if you want money back from them at any point.

If this cheque bounces I shall be a very unhappy bunny >:/


[title edited to make it more obvious ;)]

I spent a while faffing to get my phone talking bluetooth to a Debian box so that I can backup my photos and contacts etc from my phone, and thought that I'd chuck a link on here so that hopefully other people might find it when they're going through the same pain :)

http://icmfp.com/N80-bluetooth-linux.html

A conversation at work led me to thinking about the different options for media PCs, and what would be best/easiest/most-competent to set up properly for when we move house.

Options:

- Apple TV thing
- Xbox stinky thing
- Linux PC running something (MythTV?)
- Windows PC running something



PS: I'm going to try and blog a bit more often, and to use my phone's mystical camera-based powers to take pictures of things I find amusing, such as seeing a van with "KING LIFTING" on this morning (http://www.kinglifting.co.uk/) and immediately thinking it needed an apostrophe to make it 'king lifting :P Maybe this should encourage me to improve my photoshop skills :)

I found these a while ago via some blogs or other, and thought they should be propagated further due to their coolness:

Novel use for old computers as art : http://www.sandysmith.co.uk/artwork/computers/sunset.htm

Coolest building idea ever (they should actually build this, despite it probably being impossible and/or dangerous due to the sticky-out bits with no visible supports :) : http://www.ironicsans.com/2006/12/idea_a_building_shaped_like_go.html

I tend to sign up to places using email addresses under my domain which are unique for each site, so that if I later get spam to that address then I know something has gone awry. I thought that this was a bit pointless after having done this for a few years now, but then BLAM, I got some spam to an address which isn't online anywhere (well, Google can't find it and I haven't put it anywhere).

Who was it? dvd.co.uk. tsk tsk. I've emailed their postmaster, but I doubt I'll get a reply in which case I'll assume they have either had a security compromise[1] or that they sold my email address along with others from their customer base. The latter is illegal while the former is just stupad.



[1] I haven't bought anything from them in ages, because they are rubbish[2], so they don't have details of an active credit card of mine, which I am glad of in this case :P

[2] Am I allowed to say they are rubbish without getting sued? Pffft. They do suck, so I assume they can't sue me, despite how much like the US we're getting as regards legislation...

So Becky and I are both doing this diet thing where we're not allowed * and of course people bring in a record number of cakes and sweets to proffer to the office :s

One of them got stuff here : http://www.bahhumbugs.com/
which looks pretty cool, but I'm sure it must be expensive because of it looking fancy and specialising in "retro" sweets (they obviously have a different meaning of retro to me, I usually consider that things you can still buy in shops currently don't count as "retro" :P)

Of course, bringing in such sweets caused me to flashback to people managing to actually remove fillings by eating Wham bars, but all the ones brought in were of the boiled sweet variety so I don't have any YouTube-fodder I'm afraid :P


The planning for the post-diet meal has begun, as has the looking-forward to being allowed sandwiches again in a few weeks :P


Also, what should I get my mum for her birthday? :o

If I didn't already have a reasonable set of knives, then I'd get this for when Becky and I move in together in a couple of weeks ^_^

Comedy knife holder

Look I got a LiveJournal.

Next on todo list: find something to write about...