News & updates
Eliminating Internet Explorer 6 from the web
I'm sick of the "IE6 sucks, everyone should stop using it" posts. Not that I disagree of course, but it's just moaning with no action. (If you need convincing of IE6's 'suckiness', read this.) It's time to actually try and do something. To start: encourage your site's visitors to upgrade to IE7. (No, not Firefox.)
Internet Explorer version 7 is a big leap forward from version 6 and fixes the most annoying CSS bugs that have plagued developers for years. If everyone stopped using IE6 and earlier, a world of possibilities in web development would open up. We could create wonderful, hack-free web sites.
The reason I encourage the upgrade to IE7 rather than a switch to, say, Firefox, is because the vast majority of users won't switch. That's just a fact - most PC users don't like massive change (or perceived change, anyway) - but there is a good chance they will upgrade their software if notified.
INSERT COIN and other printer messages
About a week ago, a great article was posted on Digg with instructions on how to change the "ready" message on HP printers. This spawned dozens of hilarious suggestions from Digg's users.
For some reason the post has vanished from Digg, though a few of the comments are available through Google's cache. Luckily, I had copied out all the great messages with the intention of making this post. So here they are: dozens of funny messages (many of my own added) to put on your printer.
Realistic
INSERT COINNOT READY
OUT OF TONER
PC LOAD LETTER
SPELLING ERRORS FOUND
PAPER JAM
ERROR 404: PRINTER NOT FOUND
PRINTING 1 OF 7165 PAGES
PLEASE CHANGE WHITE TONER
CLEAR TRAY 8
ENTER PASSWORD
Surreal
OUT TO LUNCHOUT OF VOWELS
RADIATION LEAK
I HAZ TEH COPIES
FUEL LOW
SDRAWKCAB GNITNIRP WON
READY OR NOT HERE I COME
I PRINT THEREFORE I AM
CONNECTION TO NSA ESTABLISHED
SHOW ME YOUR TITS
OUT OF CHEESE
BEHIND YOU
STAND BACK THREE FEET
A LITTLE MORE
NOT THAT FAR
REMOVE SQUIRREL IN TRAY
INSERT BEER
SELF DESTRUCT IN 5...4...3...2...1...
BYTE ME
DRINK COKE
INSERT DIKFOR
BAD TOUCH
7-7-7 YOU WIN!
KEEP OUT
GAME OVER
DON'T LOOK UP
Parody
NEEDS MORE COWBELL [Saturday Night Live sketch]COMPUTER SAYS NO [Little Britain]
KILL ALL HUMANS [Futurama]
I'M AFRAID I CAN'T LET YOU PRINT THAT DAVE [2001: A Space Odyssey]
THE CAKE IS A LIE [Internet Phenomenon]
WILL I DREAM? [2001: A Space Odyssey, and a South Park episode]
FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT [The Matrix]
THERE IS NO SPOOL [The Matrix]
I AM BENDER PLEASE INSERT GIRDER [Futurama]
FEED ME STRAY CAT [American Pshycho]
MERGING WITH SKYNET [Terminator]
OH NOZ! I BROKED UR PRINTZ [Digg error message]
Small updates
A few small updates have been made to the site, particularly the portfolio page. As usual, changes are in the works all over the place: I'm currently writing a big update to my PHP ScoreBoard script, as well as a news/content management system, similar to the CuteNews I'm using now. A new design for CodeLair will be coming soon, too.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO TOAD!
By which I mean... I've added new pictures to the 'toon pics' gallery. The best few are below but there are many more including images from Family Guy, American Dad, Futurama and Dilbert!
I also laid out the page better and there is now a nice image viewer for the images.
Toon Pics
More country information
I finished that database of country information I was working on last week. Now it includes the continent and location within each continent (with "9 degrees of accuracy"!); capital city; currency; population, area and population density; birth rate, death rate and life expextancy; and GDP for each country!
Since it all comes from a database I made it so that you can order by each field, so you can see find out that China has the most inhabitants (suprise, suprise...) with over 1.3 billion, or that Monaco is the most densely populated country in the world with 23,660 people per kilometer.
Country profiles
I also added profiles for each state of the U.S.A., which includes name, location, capital city and year of statehood.
U.S. state profiles
I think these will stay pretty much static for now. There are a few things I'd like to add but don't really have the time right now.
A new design (sort of...)
Procrastination. I really hate doing it, but now and again it becomes very fruitful... I've done no proper work this week but instead have been incredibly busy doing other useful things.
This includes redesigning my homepage. Though it's not really a new design...it's actually based on a temporary design I had here ages ago. However, it's been coded entirely from scratch with perfectly clean HTML and CSS. It also uses colours from the Tango Project, which I may talk about in a future post (it's a great source for icons if you ever need some).
I'm not really into this whole 'blogging' malarkey, but I added Cutenews to make posting updates easier. I'm not gonna start posting my thoughts or what I ate for dinner yesterday or any of that rubbish, but I may post any cool web sites I stumble upon, mention updates to my various sites and projects I play around with, or just anything humourous that comes into my head. You know, useful stuff.
Well, I guess I'd better get back into Uni work. I'll be safe in the knowledge that probably no one will ever read this...
P.S. there is a little 'Easter Egg' on this page. I think it's gonna be pretty difficult to spot, so I'll add that you'll probably only find it funny if you're a fan of Futurama...
More cartoon images
Previously I posted pictures I'd created on this page, from animated television shows such as Dilbert and South Park. Now I bring you some more, from Futurama and Aqua Teen Hunger Force! And not just that, they've all been collated onto one nice mini-site.
View the new cartoon pictures site
I'll post the additions here for quick reference (note wallpaper links go to 1024¿768 versions). Hopefully more coming soon!
Countries of the world
A few days ago I was searching for a site that listed all the countries of the world along with their capital cities. Why? Well, I thought it would be fun to try and learn the capital city of every country in the world. I don't expect to ever achieve this to 100% but I'm slowly learning more and more, starting with the most popular or well-known countries.
Anyway, as usual Wikipedia had what I was looking for, but then I got interested in other country details such as population, area and so on. To my surprise, I couldn't find a page on Wikipedia or the rest of the internet with any sort of handy collation of this data. One site had information on a per-country basis, but I'm a picky guy; I want it all on one page.
So I decided to create my own database of information so I could generate any format of the data to my own liking! So far I've got capital cities, populations, land areas, population densities, birth rates, death rates and Gross Domestic Products for every sovereign state in the world (with a few missing entries). I'm hoping to add currencies, locations (continents and areas of continents, e.g. "Western Europe") and flags.
See my progress