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February, 2005

  1. Only Smarties Have The Answer

    February 18, 2005 by dafyd

    Why, oh why, have Nestle decided to stop selling Smarties in tubes? It’s as if Terry’s decided that making Chocolate Oranges round was too expensive, and started selling them as cubes. Or Cadbury’s got fed up with Creme Eggs, and started making Creme Nuggets, or something. I’m disgusted.

    I mean, just look at the new ‘hexatube’:

    Smarties packaging old and new

    It looks really, really naff. The tubes are what Smarties are famous for – I remember getting a tube of Smarties when I swam my first 5 metres at school*. And these new hexatubes don’t have the letters on top – again, something that will always be associated with Smarties.

    Most importantly, though, I doubt you’ll be able to use the new hexatubes as blowpipes, firing the top at anyone who happened to be in range.

    I propose a complete boycott of all Nestle products – I’ll suggest it to the DSU. Oh, wait – they already do that. Drat.

    *Rewarding exercise with chocolate – somehow, I doubt they still do that after all the fuss with Cadbury’s last year…

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  2. Optical Illusion

    February 17, 2005 by dafyd

    If you stare at the image long enough, you should see a giraffe:

    Giraffe Illusion

    Category 1 | Tags: | 2 Comments

  3. Get Firefox!

    February 16, 2005 by dafyd

    On February 15th, exactly 99 days after it was released, Firefox 1.0 smashed through the 25 million download milestone.

    By now, anyone vaguely interested in the Internet should have picked up that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 is, quite frankly, not up to the job. It is unsecure, potentially dangerous, and not particularly user friendly. It is so bad that Microsoft, who previously said that IE6 would be the last incarnation of Internet Explorer, are having to bring it out of retirement and release IE7 to fix the bugs.

    Get Firefox!By the same note, anyone who has been watching the news – especially in the States – should have heard of this new wunder-browser, Firefox. It’s an open source program (which means that the code behind it has been developed by a community of volunteers who have donated their time, skill and the finished product to the web as a whole), so it’s free, incredibly easy to use, and (much as I hate to say it) the best thing to hit the Internet since Internet Explorer 4.

    Now, Firefox is also standards-compliant: this means that it displays web pages the way they should be displayed. If you view this website in IE6, you’ll see it differently than I intend for you to see it. You see it the way Microsoft thinks you want to see – OK, no problem there… but it’s my site, not Microsoft’s!

    Firefox is incredibly customizable – you can skin it, add extensions, and completely reconfigure how you use it. If you look at this screenshot of my Firefox, you can see what I’ve done to it.

    I’ve been using Firefox since version 0.7 – when it was still in beta (and called Firebird, of all things – even before that, it was called Phoenix) and have absolutely no problems. I love it.

    And I urge everyone who isn’t already using Firefox (my parents…) to switch over as soon as you can, especially if you’re still using IE6. You really won’t regret it!

    25m Firefox downloads

    Category 1 | Tags: | 2 Comments

  4. Cat Stevens = Yusuf Islam = Microsoft?

    February 15, 2005 by dafyd

    The BBC’s story about Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, winning substantial damages from two UK newspapers (the Sun and the Sunday Times) which falsely claimed he supported terrorism contains a link to Yusuf Islam’s site – but when you click on it in Firefox… you end up chez Bill Gates. Interesting.

    I know why it happens – the BBC reporter missed a colon out of the address, making it http//yusufislam.org.uk, which their website has interpreted as http:// http//www.yusufislam.org.uk (note the space). What I don’t get is why it redirects to Microsoft in Firefox, when in IE it just gives me the standard network error. I think there be some mighty clever gubbings inside that there browser… but which give a slightly unexpected result in this case!

    Wahhey! I’ve just written a whole 150-word post about a missing colon! Watch out, Lynne Truss…

    In other news, David’s started wittering on about something or other. Not sure what. But it involves the names Dafyd, Jennie, Bill, Tom, Dick, and Harry. And the French language. Approximately.

    Category 1 | Tags: | 2 Comments

  5. Boris wins award!

    February 14, 2005 by dafyd

    Boris Johnson has won the Channel 4 News award for the person who made the biggest impression on the politics of 2004.

    Quite how that works, I’m not sure.

    But his acceptance speech has to be seen to be believed – it’s an act of bumbling ineptitude of magnificent proportions. You can watch the video here, courtesy of M3ssy and Moi.

    Go Boris!

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  6. The wisdom of Dafyd

    February 13, 2005 by dafyd

    Confucius say man who run in front of bus get tyred, man who run behind bus get exhausted.

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  7. I want one!

    February 12, 2005 by dafyd

    darth_tater.jpg

    It’s Darth Tater – Mr Potato Head, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

    They’re available from Amazon.com, by the way!

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  8. Aargh – the noise!

    February 11, 2005 by dafyd

    It’s absolutely tipping it down at the moment… and the corrugated iron roof that the builders* have constructed outside our room is SO VERY NOISY.

    There are three different “projects” that they’re doing around Castle at the moment – as far as I can tell there are no more than 5 workmen on site at any one time. They have a huge budget – ‘cos the University seems to have more money than sense – so they’ve got all these “Electric Ladders”, which means they don’t even need to carry anything. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Fawlty Towers episode with “O’Reilly Men”… they are exactly like them!

    O'Reilly Men

    *I use the term loosely, as they don’t actually appear to be doing any building** at the moment.

    **or anything else, actually. Aah, the great British workman. Reminds me of a Max Boyce song…

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  9. Today’s Newspapers

    February 11, 2005 by dafyd

    In true Newsnight stylee, I thought I’d have a look at this morning’s front pages. Today is a pretty interesting day, because yesterday there was officially only one piece of news in Britain. Two quite famous and marginally important people are going to get married.

    The Daily Express brings the dead back to life, once more:

    The Daily Mirror gets its facts wrong (she won’t be a princess, apparently)… and wheels out Paul Burrell (“He can’t be king”):

    Daily Telegraph – very conservative. I’m guessing the feature advertised at the top (“Their 30-year love affair”) has been sitting around for a while. Incidentally, their headline “…but the public don’t want her to be Queen” is wrong. Actually, more people couldn’t care less than have an opinion either way!

    The Financial Times, thank God, hardly mentions it on their front page. Good thing, too.

    And my favourite of them all… the Independent, echoing exactly my thoughts:

    (little black box, bottom-right hand corner: “And in other news: Charles to wed”. Classic!)

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  10. New blog design … maybe

    February 10, 2005 by dafyd

    I’ve had a play with the design of the blog – which eventually I’ll carry over to the rest of the site.

    Before I actually implement it, though, I’d like your comments – you can see a screenshot of it here. Ignore the content… and it is quite a large image!

    Please do let me know what you think – I like it … but I want to know if you do too!

    Category 1 | Tags: | 1 Comment

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