Eeep…
Well, that’s my packing decisions made for me…
Off for a bit…
..to and ’s wedding, via and and the esteemed Mr Talbot (WINOLJ)…
LJ will be light to non-existant!
Less Than I Would Have Thought: Similar Interests Memeage
Found in ’s LJ…
Question 1: How many of your “friends” are on your similar interests list?
20
Question 2: How many of your “friends” are in the top 10 of your similar interests list?
6
Using the standard LJ tools:
1
2
3
4
8
9
11
16
34
38
40
44
52
67
77
87
95
104
116
119
A new Google toolbar
If you’re using Internet Explorer on a Windows PC you can now try out the new Google toolbar, with its new “blog-this” function, form filling tools, and pop-up stoppers.
Pity it won’t blog to LJ, though!
The weekly shameless self promotion moment…
…is this Guardian piece on how competing technologies like Java and .NET can work together (my working title was “Playing Well With Others”…)
And don’t forget to read ’s piece on mobile email!
Cat FUD
We often talk about cat fud, but what if it was cat FUD – the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt of computer marketing campaigns? So what would cat FUD be?
“Ah, cats, they wake you up at 4.30 in the morning”
“Cats shed white on black, and black on white – it’s a fact”
“Did you know hairballs explode on contact with water?”
“That cute kitten? Did you sign the maintenance contract?”
“Upgrade a cat? Fat chance!”
Hmm. Not so much FUD as the truth of living with a pride of the beasts….
More neat CSS tricks for LJ: overlaying text
This is a little trick for overlaying text in LJ comments and messages (depending on the style used!).
Back
Front
It’s fairly simple to do, too…
The HTML I used uses inline CSS to manage the layout.
<lj-raw>
<DIV style="line-height:0px">
<P>
<BR>
<FONT STYLE="color: red; font-family: 'Tahoma', sans-serif; font-size: 42pt">Back</FONT>
<BR>
<FONT STYLE="color: blue; font-family: 'Tahoma', sans-serif; font-size: 78pt">Front</FONT>
</DIV>
<BR>
</P>
</lj-raw>
It helps to put a few lines of padding white space around the code to make sure you don’t get nasty layout effects…
(Update 1: Probably best if you look at this in a comment view to see the full effect.)
(Update 2: The LJ autoformat system mangled the DIV style I was using. So I have used <lj-raw> tags to fix it. See the code sample for the latest changes…)
Baaa! Like Sheep we follow…
a bit self-willed
independent
does not allow contradiction or arguments
loves life
its family
children and animals
a bit of a butterfly
good sense of humor
likes idleness and laziness
of practical talent and intelligence.
The Response Source Race
Working as a technology journalist, it’s important to have good information sources. One of the most useful is a press release site called SourceWire. As well as publishing the latest releases, SourceWire also has a useful tool: Tech Response Source.
Response Source really speeds up research: fill in a form, click a button and then wait for the responses from PR companies to roll in.
I’ve taken to timing how long it takes for me to get the first email response from a real person, based on the timestamp on the SourceWire confirmation mail arriving in my mailbox. Until today, the record was 6 minutes. Not bad, I thought, and probably hard to beat.
Well, I was wrong.
Today the record was comprehensively smashed. It now stands at 2 minutes.
Who, or what, will beat that?
(Perhaps I need to get out more!)
