Routed routers and CSS

Today consisted of miscellaneous fun and frustration, most of it revolving around assorted pieces of technology. I’ve decided that my hardware took offense at my failure to let them know I was going away for a few days, and as such, it is all refusing to work.

At least, it was all refusing to work — I’ve sat here for much of the day with a mouse in one hand and a knife flicking in and out in the other, and it seems to have taken a hint. In the end, I ended up not doing too much with hardware, although I had some seriously odd problems with my router, which are easily attributed to software, but it’s far more difficult to explain exactly what the software was doing wrong. I made a call to my ISP to see if there were any reported faults (because they’d never support me, as I dare to run, get this, a firewall on direct-to-Internet connected computers, even when I’m forced by support to not use my rouer)… turns out there wasn’t, and when I convinced myself it was worth plugging in the modem direct to one of the two remaining Windows computers (I had to find a disc with firewall software on, that thing hadn’t had a direct connection for so long!), it connected fine. Square one.

At least I had working broadband, though. I kind of got frustrated at that point, and proceeded to blame SmoothWall… it was stubbornly refusing to connect in any circumstances, despite the built in PPPOE client in my nifty little D-Link DSL 300 modem managing just fine. The next port-of-call was the website of my previous router distribution, Vortech Consulting, the makers of Coyote Linux. I’ll admit, I’m a tad promiscuous when it comes to technology… it’s part of being a geek, I’m sorry.

The latest version of Coyote is quite nice — better than the old version of it, certainly. It still fits on a single floppy with tonnes of room to spare, and I think it’s generally quite nifty. It doesn’t do all the trippy things that SmoothWall did, but there are modules I could download to do the same, if I were so inclined. Not that I am.

On a non-failing equpiment related front, I spent the other part of my day hacking at CSS of two websites, one of which is turning out rather nicely. I’m applying some of Eric Meyer’s wonderful CSS/edge techniques to one of them, which is essentially taking the primary navigation I’ve got happening on this website, and adding some rather classy touches to it. This time around, it has to work well in Internet Explorer, though. Don’t you hate that? If you look to the top right of this web page (as of the style in production use on October 5, 2004) in Internet Explorer, the navigation menus are decidedly not-working, when compared to their intended display, as per Mozilla-based browsers (including Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox) and recent-ish versions of Opera.

Hopefully I’ll bother porting the fixed version back to this website when that project goes live, but we’ll see. ’tis exciting stuff, really. I’m a little wary about the sematics of Eric’s code, thinking especially of non-visual UA‘s, but such problems shall disappear by the final version of the project, as text will be replaced with images — purely presentational elements, with null alt values, such that the ancillary text may explain things perfectly clearly without cluttering non-visual “display” (or just making no sense when read aloud by screenreaders). But I’m rambling; none of this makes sense to the rest of the world. That said, I’ll keep rambling about it, in the hope that there’s some documentary value to what is written once various websites go live.

Copyright and e-voting

Electronic voting and copyright? – CNET News.com

A triumph for the little people.

Returned.

Yarrr. I’m back from my unannounced holiday, to a mass of email, an overflowing RSS reader, and a computer which is booting intermittently. I want to go back on holidays.

Yes, I did have Internet access where I was staying. I enjoy knowing I can blog from anywhere in the world, nearly as much as I enjoy knowing that I can choose not to. And so I didn’t — I realised that I hadn’t announced my departure a few days back, but decided it wasn’t worth writing home about. This was a holiday from blogging as much as anything else; not that blogging is something to be escaped, necessarily, but it is good to get away from on occasion.

And whilst I was escaping, I immersed myself in books, and cameras, amongst other things. Of books, more shall be said later, if at all. Of cameras, more details are coming, I promise — along with pictures, so I hope. “Other things” encompass more toys, including the pending arrival of some semi-vintage (read: old, but relatively intact and refurbished) speakers; for those who care, and/or are familiar with such things, I’ve got a pair of Acoustic Research AR14 2-way speakers in storage, which I’m hoping to put to good use once this damn house is sold, or at least taken off the market. They sound decidedly warm, although the HF is quite distinctive. Mid-range is a tad lacking, but certainly no worse that what I’m currently using.

So, I’m looking forwards to that. As I am looking forwards to playing with this camera (an SLR) over the next few days. I haven’t time to upload pictures of the camera itself right now, but it’s an old Pentax Asahi SP500 model — if you care that much, Google’s number one match for “Pentax Asahi” at the time of writing returns a website which brandishes a few decent pictures of the camera. As far as I can tell, the camera itself is about 30 years old, and is in pretty decent nick… I’ve got two lenses for it, details of which will be posted later, and a UV filter for one of those lenses.

It’s a 35mm camera, and was apparently last used in the early ’90s… Because I couldn’t bring myself just to waste the mostly-unused film which remained in the camera, I fear that some rather good shots have gone to waste on the aged film which I’ve used for the last two days. We shall see.

Aside from all of that, I’m back in Sydney. Exciting things are happening in the realm of web development, away from this website, which shall be unveiled in the weeks to come. Until later, I’m going to sleep…

EDIT: Looks as though someone was screwing with Google’s indexing system as I searched for “Pentax Asahi” — the aforementioned page disappeared into the void. For reference, the page was http://www.talboys.fsnet.co.uk/roderickt/pentaxcdfiles.htm.

RSS Change

I’ve decided to switch the syndication feeds here across to fulltext mode. Just because. It probably doesn’t matter that much, but I prefer fulltext feeds, so meh. Do come and comment still, won’t you?

Dialogue: Linux, the answer to all problems

Inspired by comments made by Dale regarding my use of Linux.

*Josh walks in, appearing to have just been hit by a 16 wheel semi-trailer*
Teacher: Why are you late to school?
You: Linux.
Teacher: *looks sympathetically at Josh*
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
*Josh enters room and sits down, with no further questioning*