Whomwah.com

It seems that BBC have provided the entire internet with a look inside the amazing network. I have been long awaiting the time everyone can see the almighty web power thats there with over 40 webservers and 12 firewalls and the 8Gbps intersite connections. Check out the load graphs!

I received an album at Christmas from my girlfriends brother called American Song-Poem Anthology. It features tracks that were created in the 60s and 70s by putting ads in the back of music magazines and relying on the general public to send in their own “song-poems”. This people were paid whatever they saw fit ($50-$100s), and then professional musicans would come record these songs in the hope of turning them into something to cherish. Make up you own mind if they did this or not. With tracks like : Jimmy Carter Says “Yes” and I Lost My Girl To An Argentinian Cowboy, they certainly had a sense of humour.

I ordered a USB lead from amazon the other day and got it this morning suitably packaged like so. Just a little bit over the top I feel.

This guy is a PC case modder and also a AFOL. He has built numerious cases all shown in this gallery. I prefer some of the new ones at the bottom of the page. I’m waiting for the lego monitor. mouse and keyboard next.

I have only just found out about Google suggest. It is as it says on there site:

As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google’s “Did you mean?” feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. For example, if you type “bass,” Google Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include “bass fishing” or “bass guitar.” Similarly, if you type in only part of a word, like “progr,” Google Suggest might offer you refinements like “programming,” “programming languages,” “progesterone,” or “progressive.” You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

I’m not really sure how useful this would be too me on ‘would I use it’ level but progmatically it’s amazing. The JavaScipt involved is highly complex and has been dissected and explained by Chris Justus over at his blog. He has taken time to re-write the code and comment it so it is easier to read and understand. Well worth a look if you are a developer.

This article suggests best practises for seperating text in the <title> tag. It is based on the speech that comes from JAWS. It is reallu useful and I have to say I will be changing my habits. I used to use « a lot as I thought it looked nice but it seems that when JAWS sees this it explains it in a long winded way which can not be fin for the user.

The article finally comes to the conclusion that the best seperators to use are the vertical bar (|), the dot (.) and the dash (-).

Read the article here

I have just bought myself an Ipod mini much to the bewilderment of my friends. Mainly due to the fact I only bought a 20gig Ipod a few months ago. To answer then and to get it out of my system, here’s my reasons: apart from the fact I had just been paid for some freelance and had some spare cash.

I was finding on the 20gig I could never decide what to play. Strange I know but when you have so much music at you fingertips and only a small journey to work, you spent half the journey deciding what to play. It’s not as simple as just playing everything on shuffle. Sometimes I want to hear songs by someone, but not have to choose between 400 people.

So in comes the Ipod mini, only 4gig. It means I can stick a few of the old favs on there and then I have created a playlist of (currently un- rated songs) that I can slowly rate (my big Ipod couldn’t do that) and it means that whenever I dock the thing it gives me a bank of new stuff to listen to as well as the old favs.

See it was a simple decision after all. Oh and plus it looks and feels lovely. In fact thinking about it that could be the only reason.

One the guys at work did a quick browser stats review yesterday for the figures in 2005 (yes I know we’re only 6 days in) and my they have made interesting viewing. Firefox has made a giant leap. Let hope this continues for the rest of the year.

58.92%  IE6 (down 8%)
23.37%  Firefox (up 11% - bear in mind this is from just 3 days of stats though)
5.41%  IE5 and 5.5 (down 3% - IE5 family appears to be dying out!)
1.62%  Safari (down 0.2%, but still above FF on Mac which is now at 1.058%)
1.20%  RSS News Feed Aggregators (new, better detection = higher % here)
1.12%  Phones + Handhelds (new, better detection = higher % here)

I read that over the weekend ebay have finally ditched MD Passport. About time too. The tedious and endless loop that you have to go through just get it running was always going to be its downfall. I understood the principle (1 click login and transactions for all) but in these days of autofill form functions you can fill forms in no time and you don’t have to have the information stored else where. Good on you ebay, others please follow suit.