Less than a week until I hit the snow. Tash organised a seven day snowboarding sojourn to Chamonix where I will learn afresh the true meaning of pain. I have not been boarding for nearly three years, and I’ve gained about 10 kilos in that time. This weekend was mostly spent buying new gear – goggles, gloves, thick toasty socks, and a kick-arse West Beach jacket. Yee-hah!

Saddam captured – the promise of ‘justice’ being served to this tyrant may cause many not to consider the double standards and hypocrisy represented by this action.

I heard on the news a surprised British interviewer saying that Saddam’s trial might be held in Iraq. Why was he surprised? Saddam did nothing to Britain or the US until they attacked him. His trial should be an Iraqi affair – the Iraqi people have suffered more than the Iranians or Kuwatis, and certainly more than the US and the UK. In the mean time when will Cheney / Rumsfeld / Kissinger et al be tried for their crimes?

We all know the atrocities that Saddam committed against the Kurds, but why is there so little condemnation of Turkish raids against the same people?

There are too few ‘good-guys’ in this saga – it’s not a simple matter of one side being ‘right’. I hope that more people realise this and can condemn the crimes of anyone, regardless of what side they’re on.

Someone in the Harrods marketing department has committed something of a branding sin. In the sports section they have a shoe area that is called ‘The Sweatshop’. However, the only sign of a sweat-shop I could see was the end-product.

The other day I installed Mandrake Linux 9.1 and all things internet worked fine. So I get to thinking that I’ll go one better and give myself an upgrade to the recently released 9.2. 9.2 is definitely slicker than 9.1, but for the life of me I have yet to get my adsl modem, a Speedtouch 330, to connect to the internet. I needed to download the microcode (mgmt.o) with 9.1 to get it to work, but that was the only drama. I assumed that it would be the same in 9.2. I have found a few pages about the issue but as yet none have worked.

When I get it working I will post an answer here incase anyone else has the same issues.

Update I found this that I will try tomorrow – looking hopeful.

Reading: Gore Vidal’s ‘Inventing a Nation’. It’s about some of the founding fathers of the US, and their original vision/reservations for the future of the Union. I find Mr Vidal’s style so enjoyable to read that it is hard to put down.

The most popular search term from which users find this site? ‘doggers’. And there’s a bit of a scene down there in Poole by the looks of it. Nearly 800 ‘unique visitors’ last month. I’m stoked! If you want to boost your ratings, there’s only one real answer….

…or I think his nose might have started growing. He was on Jay Leno’s show claiming to have climbed the Welliewood icon that is the bucket fountain, and, dig this, pissed in it. Bastard. However, I think he might be telling porkies. I’d be surprised if he’d have been able to climb the fountain with three mates and then piss into it. It’s possible but highly unlikley. I’ll forgive him this time.

I’ve been wondering if you can run linux on a Sony Ericsson T610 (my latest toy). Volker reports that someone got it running on a digi-cam. And he said that it’s useless????

I took the plunge (again) last week and installed Linux on the Thinkpad. I first used Linux back in 1998, and every couple of years do an experimental install to see how it’s changed. I’ve never really stuck with it though, as I find myself forced back to Windows because of my reliance on Notes. A couple of years ago I tired to get Notes 5 running on Mandrake Linux (with Wine) but it never got through the installation. With my usual determination I gave up after two attempts….

This time I would like to stick with Linux for a little longer, and may attempt to get Notes running (which would mean no more Windows). I figure that if I was not forced back to Windows all the time by running a dual boot system I would be Linux ‘power-user’ in no time.

And another reason to stick with Linux, I’ve just seen one of my sites in Konqueror – oh shite.

Here’s an IE bug I’ve just found out about… if you create a div, assign it a margin: and then assign float:left; to the div, IE gives you a bonus DOUBLE MARGIN WIDTH! Oh, yes, I feel like the big winner here today.

Fortunately there is an answer. It looks as though all(?) versions of IE can be fooled (in much the same way as that clever bastard Tantek Celik’s ol’ box model hack ).

The answer, and other goodies, at CSS hub.

Undercrank is where I found the first reference to the problem, and again, there is some other good stuff on this site.

Here is a list of browsers that it works with from centricle.com

A curse on virgin.net “broadband”! It has been incredibly slllloooooowwww for weeks now. It may take, say, 10 minutes (while I make the tea and watch a bit of telly) to download just the top graphic on a page. They have promised that come the 14th of November all will be well, but I will believe it when I see it. To celebrate I will download Mandrake Linux 9.2 and Notes 6.5 so I can have a poke around.

The worst thing about virgin is that they still haven’t replied to my email asking for an explanation – I have had to try and check their web site, which is an odyssey in human patience. However, when I spoke to a friend who’s also on virgin he said he was having no problems….