New Design: Frosty Zoom

As you can see (if you are viewing in a browser) I have created a new website design. Not much of the MovableType templates are left.

The new design is a pure CSS based design. There should be no font tags anywhere, and the only table that exists on the entire site is the standard MovableType calendar. I don't think i'm quite ready to try and de-tablify that yet.

I have tested this site design in Mozilla Firebird 0.7 and IE 6.0.2800. It /almost/ looks the same on each browser, the only difference being the menu bar at the top (which is actually an unordered list). On Mozilla there is some padding between each menu item that i'm not quite sure how to get rid of (maybe some css guru out there can give me a point in the right direction?). It wasn't to hard getting both browsers looking very similar, but by the same token my design isn't exactly pushing the boundaries of CSS.

For best effects you should have the Lucida Grande font installed on your system. If you don't have Lucida Grande (which incidently is one of the fonts that makes OSX look gorgeous) it will default to Verdana.

To give the transparent effect I have had to use a halfscreen light grey image. I can't wait till you can do something like this though:

.blogbody
   {
   background-color: #666666;
   background-opacity: 20%;
   }

If anyone notices anything that doesn't work on their particular browser (havent tested on opera yet, or any mac or linux browser like konqeror) then please drop me an email so I can have a look at the stylesheet.

Update: I am still working on the photo gallery template page. Note that although it doesnt currently fit together very well, it does actually work.

World66 Maps

World66 is nifty. It lets you enter the countries, and states within the US that you have visited and produces a world map highlighting the countries visited in red.

Here is my World map:

And here is my US States map (not bad for an Aussie :), I think):

Moving to the UK - Quick Financial Guide (For Renters)

If you're going to move to the UK, here are a number of bills you should plan to expect in the first month or 2 if you plan on renting.

1. 1 Months rent in advance, and 1 months rent as bond. This is standard fare, but can be painfull if you live in (expect a medium sized apartment to be about 250-350 pounds per week) or very near to London (In the area that Sarah and I are in expect anywhere from 500-900 per month for a decent place, dependant on size)
2. Over here rent tentants pay council tax (rates), expect about 700-1000 pounds per year. Luckily you can pay in installments so expect about 200-300 pounds in the first month
3. Sewerage Bill (Charged in 3 monthly blocks of about 30 pounds each)
4. Water Bill (Again charged in 3 monthly blocks), Most places are on a "rates" style system where you pay a fixed fee every 3 months but some places are on a meter. For rates expect about 50-70 per 3 months.
5. Telephone Bill (Charged in 3 monthly blocks), Price depends on what connection plan you use but you will pay line rental up front.
6. Gas Bill (Charged in 3 monthly blocks). Haven't recieved this yet so can't give an estimate in price
7. Electricity Bill (Charged in 3 monthly blocks). Again, haven't received this yet so can't give an estimate in price

So intial outlay could be anywhere from 2,800 - 3,500 pounds ($AUD 5,500 - 9,000) depending on where you live.

Some other things to watch out for:

• Everything takes a _long_ time to get done over here. Expect a lot of things to require your presence in person. There are a lot of things you can't do over the phone.
• Most furniture is made to order, and it can take a long time to make. For instance the sofa's that Sarah and I ordered are going to take 8 weeks for delivery (ordered 3 weeks ago now). Our bed that was supposed to be delivered in 1 week has now taken 3 weeks.
• People don't like to help you even though its their job. You will get a wide range of attitudes when trying to sort things out on the phone from the plain unhelpfull to the rude.
• Your US or Australian keyboard won't have a pound symbol (currency pound not the # (hash)) on the keyboard, which can be a pain in the butt :)

If I think of anything I have missed here I will update this post.

Frasier Font

Anyone got any idea what font is used in the short black scene descriptors in Frasier?

Testing BlogJet

Ugh, Blogjet inserts masses of font tags, and paragraph tags. I think I'll stick with w.blogger.

New RSS Aggregator

Oh I thought I should mention, I have been using a new aggregator for about the last month now, IntraVNews, which runs inside Outlook.

It is very handy having RSS inside of outlook, though theres a number of limitations that I have found with outlooks standard display of items that I don't like. Unfortunately these can't be changed.

1. When I used to use SharpReader I would select a folder somewhere in my hierarchy and read all unread messages for that branch of my tree. Can't be done in Outlook.
2. The space bar in SharpReader moves between unread items, and moves between feeds when unread items in the current feed have been exhausted. This behaviour is totally different in Outlook.
3. Memory. I figured the one thing that I would gain by putting all my feeds into Outlook was to curb SharpReader's horrendous memory usage. Outlook is now using almost 60mb of RAM.
4. When my folder tree is collapsed in Outlook I can't see which branches contained unread items, or how many unread items.

I have a feeling that standalone aggregators will eventually clearly distinguish themselves as a force to be rekoned with, however for the moment despite the reasons not to use an Outlook embedded aggregator, the convenience wins out and I will be sticking with IntraVNews.

Punk Pop is mood altering

I woke up this morning tired and in a bad mood.

I sat down and read all my new rss feeds that came in overnight.

I checked email.

(note the order...)

I put on some punk-pop music.

I am now happy!

Offer From Accenture Technology Solutions

What a nice email title to receive when doing a routine send/receive.

Of course I have accepted the offer and I start with Accenture Technology Solutions on 23rd February as a C# .NET Software Engineer. I am looking forward to the challenges that this position within Accenture can provide me, and the solutions I am going to help provide.

I will be based in the London Denning House Delivery Centre.