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Diary (July 2001)

Quiet month, this month. The diary sort of trailed off at the end and the period spanned into August where very few diary entries have been made. XML work on xsltproc and others was started in earnest this month, and further tools were checked in to CVS for the various little bits. I tried playing Civilisation again this month, too, which latet gave rise to playing Alpha Centuri.

24 Jul 2001 (Tuesday) Permanent reference to this entry

TV.

So, what have I been up to today ? Nothing much, it seems. Telly seem to have featured this evening. 'The West Wing', which I'm really getting into, and 'My Date With The President's Daughter' which was on the Disney Channel. Ok, so it's silly. But I like silly. And I really enjoy that kind of thing. Yes, I'm just a big kid <sigh>.

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23 Jul 2001 (Monday) Permanent reference to this entry

Bug hunting.
XML docs.

Today has been a bug-hunting day. Not overly fun. But it's getting somewhere, at least.

I've been working on XML-ifying a load of documents that I've got lying around with the intent that they're more parsable like that. I'm not sure that I've structured them correctly, but I'm reasonably impressed with what I've got so far. Needs more work, obviously, but getting there. I was quite chuffed that I managed to convert 90% of the Freeway documentation to XML straight off; the only problem with it (other than the single typo that I managed to make!) is that I don't have a translation for an upcall section just yet. Services, SWIs, *Commands, different table formats and the major sections I've got, but no vectors, upcalls or events. I might just do Upcalls as I need those now.

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22 Jul 2001 (Sunday) Permanent reference to this entry

Comments.

Sometimes you get amusing comments to the diary...

[Quote]
dont put a diary of your life on the internet. Because nobody cares. You say you have mp3s but i don't see any. You should be honest. Well, tata fat manwhore.
[ Comment about the Diary ]
[Quote]

Generally in keeping with the sort of thing you see to newsgroups and the particular style of writing that seems to be common amongst those failing to come to grips with the Internet. Without meaning to be elitist, and I realise that I am, there was something a little better about the Internet of a few years ago, never mind much further back than that. The fact that there are so many idiots about is mostly due to the fact that the Internet is open to all. It's an open forum. Open for all, and available for any purposes. So you get the idiots, the genius, those people out for a quick million, and everything in between. It's both unfortunate and ideal for expression. But, like everything else, it's really an controlled system presented anarchic by those who wish you to believe that it's any different from anything else. It's controlled purely because a system of any size requires rules. The rules are mostly technological, and constrain how you talk between locations, but there are self-imposing controls within the system too. Unfortunately, most of those are too lax - people take it as acceptable to pose as someone else, rather than just being anonymous.

Alas, I'm whittering on about stuff of no interest. But, who cares? It's my diary. It's for me. And everyone else can just bugger off if they don't like it <smile>.

Actually, I've done absolutely nothing of any use this weekend, which is quite bad. But, I've had a rest and feel a lot better for it.

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17 Jul 2001 (Tuesday) Permanent reference to this entry

XML documentation.

I seem to have spent most of the day writing xslt documents to allow me to document things. Previously I've documented things using hsc, which really is a poor substitute for xslt, even though it's a lot more powerful in some respects. xslt has to win because it's a lot more standardised.

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16 Jul 2001 (Monday) Permanent reference to this entry

Astounding use of Oregano.
Documentation.

Amazing where Oregano will pop up. I thought I'd look at David Chess' log as I've not seen it in ages. And in one of the links was a minor mod for apache to make it fail to serve to Internet Explorer on Fridays. Interesting way of fighting the a poor standards implementor, but wrong in that it removes choice. Anyhow, part of the code states...

    if (agent
        && strstr (agent, "msie")
        && ! strstr (agent, "opera")
        && ! strstr (agent, "oregano"))
as its check for IE. Because Oregano is configurable to pretend to be IE, I assume it made it to the list, just as Opera does. One wonders about this as Fresco is more widespread (AIUI) and yet Oregano manages to make it to the list. I guess we have to assume that deployed Fresco fakes Mozilla only, and deployed Oregano fakes MSIE.

Lots of documentation thingies tonight. I hate documenting stuff. On the plus side, CVSLogProcess is now checked in, so I need never worry that I'll lose anything.

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15 Jul 2001 (Sunday) Permanent reference to this entry

Civilisation.

<sigh> Civilisation is just far too addictive. I've spent most of this evening playing a game that I know I've already won, just so that I can irrigate and transform most of Europe into a giant farmyard. And, every so often, nuking the Zulu nation in Africa into a pulp.

<laugh> Relieves the boredom, I guess.

Nice bug report from John Tytgat today. SVG can lose parts of its display if you're dragging the window as it's resized. It's a known problem, but it's another one that gives me an incentive to add zoom and pan.

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12 Jul 2001 (Thursday) Permanent reference to this entry

Diary.
Recent stuff.
Julian's results.
David Copperfield.

A nice email from Julian Zimmerle today, asking if I was dead because the diary stopped. No; just nothing much happening in my life.

What has happened recently ? Well, Julian and Simon are back from uni. Julian got a first, and his presentation thingy is tomorrow.

A week or so back, I finished David Copperfield which I really enjoyed.

I'm really getting in to watching The West Wing on E4, now. It's great fun.

Um. And I've done one or two bits on the SVG thingy. That's about it.

Hopefully, I'm back now. Yeah, really.

[Quote]
Have you died or something? Your diary hasn't been updated for ages... If you have died, at least you could have told us before hand.
[ Comment about the diary ]
[Quote]

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9 Jul 2001 (Monday) Permanent reference to this entry

Fight Club.

Watched Fight Club tonight. Reasonable film; a lot better than I was expecting, but then I really wasn't expecting anything at all.

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This page is maintained by Justin Fletcher (gerph@gerph.org).
Last modified on 08 October, 2008.