Daniel’s Blog

Lots of things are going on at the moment. Some are quite personal, so sorry if I don’t post much over the next few days.

New job is going well, I started today. Well, the damn buses made me late for the second work today. It is quite good though.

Hello all,

I am up early again, although a little later than yesterday.

Just like to point out how the weather has beeen over the last few days: Thursday Sunny, Friday Rain, Saturday Sunny, Sunday Rain. Its quite annoying, especially as I want to go to Wheatley to check out the books on Garbage Collection in Java (for my project) because I don’t know when I will be able to go next (with work etc).
I am waiting for details about the hours I can do for my new job. They said I should get an email from them at somepoint during this weekend, no details yet.

For some reason I have a feeling that today is going to be an interesting day.

Oh well, see everyone when I see you.

Daniel

So I am awake really early for some reason, even though I had a late night.

Time to think about PhD is getting closer and closer, especially as I am going back to Brookes to do my final year (of my BSc).

I am not in the right mood to do much today. I need to get some more of my project done, so I may go to Wheatley library to find a java book (see if I can sort out my “out of memory” error out, hopefully it could be resolved by a forced garbage collection, although its more likely to be an ontology problem)… wow I can be technical this time in the morning!?111

I would upload the picture that I took the other day, but its on my phone which is in the bedroom… and I don’t want to wake Maria up. Its a picture of an asbestos caution sign, quite funny, I will upload it another time.
I managed to get my bus pass yesterday, a strange guy at the desk said about my wet hair (I had to walk to the post office to get my picture done, it was pooring with rain). He was the one that cut the photo, he said “I’ll make sure that I get some of your hair in the photo, sso you can attract the girlss”, I was slightly weirded out, but it was funny.

Computing Society is going well, the new members this year are so cool and such a laugh. I have been having some good fun.

Right, I think I need to do myself some breakfast. Ciao for now.

CSS is an important part of todays web, it is helping web developers separate design from content. Nearly all of CSS 2 can be viewed by most modern browsers. CSS 3 is here already! So how are our browsers coping?

The tests that I am running are from: https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/

I am doing some tests for CSS3 in Flock and Safari. Every test has been done on the same machine:
iBook G4 with Mac OS X 10.4.7.

I will also be putting this information on my blog: https://www.vanirsystems.co.uk/danielsblog/

Flock 0.7.4.1:
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/attr.html <- All supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/pseudo.html <- enabled and disabled supported, value not supported. Text selection, nth-child and nth-of-type not supported. Not is supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/lists.html <- marker not supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/opacity.html <- Opacity supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/borders.html <- Box shadow not supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/table.html <- caption side supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/fonts.html <- min/max font size not supported. text line styles not supported. Font appearance not clear. Font effect not supported.
* https://www.quirksmode.org/css/box.html <-
* * No box-sizing defined, box-sizing: content-box, W3C box model width, box-sizing: margin-box are same size.
* * Traditional box model width, box-sizing: border-box are same size.
* * Mozilla’s padding-box, box-sizing: padding-box are same size
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/misc.html <- icon not supported. appearance not supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/resize.html <- resize not supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/content.html <- content not supported on any element.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/bg.html <- Does not look like it is supported.

Safari 2.0.4:
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/attr.html <- All supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/pseudo.html <- Enabled, disabled and value not supported. Text Selection supported. nth-child and nth-of-type not supported. Not is supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/lists.html <- marker not supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/opacity.html <- Opacity supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/borders.html <- Box shadow not supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/table.html <- caption side supported
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/fonts.html <- min/max font size not supported. text line styles not supported. Font appearance not clear. Font effect not supported. Results (h2) has a red drop shadow, so drop shadows are supported.
* https://www.quirksmode.org/css/box.html <-
* * No box-sizing defined, W3C box model width, box-sizing: content-box, box-sizing: border-box, box-sizing: padding-box, box-sizing: margin-box are same size.
* * Mozilla’s padding-box is a size
** Traditional box model width is a size
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/misc.html <- icon not supported. appearance not supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/resize.html <- resize not supported.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/content.html <- content not supported on any element.
* https://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/bg.html <- Does not look like it is supported.

I can almost guarantee that Internet Explorer 6 won’t support any of this. Internet Explorer may be a little better - who knows?

Web developers don’t need to worry about css3 yet, it does have very nice features though. The people that need to worry about this is the browser developers, so the people in the Mozilla, Flock, IE, Opera and WebKit development team get on with it :p - We want good drop shadows and classy rounded corners!

Daniel

Technorati Tags: css, css3, webstandards, webbrowsers, browsers, flock, safari, webkit, webdevelopment, mozilla

I Got the job

For those that didn’t know. I applied for a job at the SU (student union at Brookes) as a Support Worker.

I went for an interview today and got the job. I have training this Friday, and potentially start on Monday.

I am really enjoying being a guider. I love to help people, especially in a student environment. I have met some really cool people.

Hopefully the new computing freshers will join up to the Brookes Computing Society. We have set up a few events (inc. a LAN gaming event), and I hope to get a good turn out for all of them. Heres the compsoc website: https://www.brookescomputingsociety.org/

I also love Brookes, I never realised how much. Also the staff are so friendly here, they really are.

Technorati Tags: brookescomputingsociety, freshers, oxfordbrookes

The computing society now has a shop selling clothes and gifts thanks to Vanir Systems. Its linked in with the wiki, the forum and the main page. But here is the direct page:

https://www.brookescomputingsociety.org/shop.html

Its all going well, the freshers should start appearing tomorrow. In fact, i know that they will. I am doing the Guiding for the Computing and Mathematics department - I have a very red t-shirt! See picture:

If you are reading this and are a fresher (2006) at Oxford Brookes, and see me - then say hello

Technorati Tags: brookescomputingsociety, oxfordbrookes, university, oxfordbrookesuniversity, oxford, freshers

I keep getting spam as my blog comments. I may have to look for a spam filtering plugin for wordpress - I know there are some, but I would like one that has a look at every comment and if it think it is spam then puts it into the to-be-authenticated list, and if it doesn’t think it is spam then it puts it on the blog (and lets me know about it).

For now though, spam up:

Photo by “that’s MR. POPLABS” in Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/poplabs/238497652/
I hate spam in both can-meat form and in web-text form, not surprising really if you consider that I am a vegetarian!

Technorati Tags: spam, wordpress, blog, blogspam

Internet Explorer 6 has a lot of bugs, luckily a lot of the rendering, css and other standardised code bugs that were in IE6 have been fixed (see here). Good right?

However, the Design Detector Blog says “It looks like IE7 is going to be almost as buggy”. It is well known that other browsers are much better at rendering, so I am asking all readers (if they haven’t already) to convert to one of the following:

• Firefox by Mozilla: https://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
• Mozilla Suite by Mozilla: https://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/
• (Mac users?: ) Camino by Mozilla: https://www.caminobrowser.org/
• (Beta testers?: ) SeaMonkey by Mozilla: https://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/
• Opera Browser by Opera Software: https://www.opera.com/ (Mobile Version also available)
• (Mac Users that like using proprietary software? (I haven’t tested this): ) OmniWeb by the Omni Group: https://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/
• (Web developers?: ) Amaya by the W3C: https://www.w3.org/Amaya/
• (Blogger or Web 2.0 user?: ) Flock by Flock, inc: https://www.flock.com/
• (Mac users look out for: ) WebKit: https://webkit.org/

The reason for really wanting people to move away from IE, is because of the rendering problems. Its a real pain in the neck having to deal with its rendering problems specifically and they happen even when I stick 100% to standards. I don’t like haven’t to put non-standard code into my website just to handle IE bugs… it makes files bigger and it has an affect on you users too!

So please please please convert to one of the browsers discussed above (most have builds for Windows, Mac or Linux - and Opera has builds for mobiles phones!). Not only will this make web developers lives easier, but you will be safe in the knowledge that you are seeing everything how it is supposed to be and standardised websites are quicker to download and render (that is a fact!).

(but if you really really really have to use IE, then do upgrade to IE7 when its released as at least it will be slightly more modern)

All websites developed by Vanir Systems are created on an Apple iBook with OS X 10.4, and pages are created using TextWrangler and are alpha tested using Safari 2.0.4, Flock 0.7.4.1 and Mozilla 1.7.13. All websites are then beta tested on other operating systems, and other browsers (including IE6 on Windows). But if you do see any rendering errors on our pages then let me know!

Daniel

Technorati Tags: webstandards, internetexplorer, bugs, ie7, ie6, webdevelopment, mozilla, firefox

I have just sorted out the Brookes Computing Society Website:

https://www.brookescomputingsociety.org/

We now have:

• A Wiki powered by MediaWiki, which will be the main part of the site
• A Forum powered by Vanilla Forum

It is also being hosted by the Computing Department at Brookes. Its on a server called Tardis (a Sun Microsystems Machine powered by Debian).

I guess I should add this to my Vanir Systems portfolio, as technically I have made most of it, and I maintain it… but it is all volunteer work.

I still need speakers for ComputerWeeks06, a two week long event where we have speakers from the computing industry. Please leave a comment or email me to let me know whether you would like to speak in Oxford, UK (and work/research in an area of the Computing Industry).

Technorati Tags: brookescomputingsociety, computingsociety, compsoc, univerisity, oxfordbrookes, oxfordbrookesuniversity, nus, obsu