all things me

Today I’ve been doing the layout for a portfolio I’m doing. It’s for a computer studies’ course “Digital Media Technology” (emphasis on webpage techniques). I know that making a layout will take me a lot of time because I always tweak and tweak to no end. Changing colours, fonts, widths, placings. Next I’m going to start worrying about the technique part; I have access to a database and I’m using PHP to do all kinds of cool things Here’s a little tasting of the layout I’m whipping up:

Oooh, pretty! What do you think? Oh yeah, I’m making a blog There were several topics available, but I felt most passionate about a blog. Go figure.

It’s going to be really interesting to get to dig into the stuff that makes things work. I know WP, I can use it, do a little tweaking, but the database part is complete blur. Today I learnt how to set up a database connection and do statements. Unfortunately the db at the dept. of computer studies is using Oracle — I’m more familiar with MySQL — but luckily I was just on a introduction to databases course where we learnt the Oracle syntax. And luckily, they aren’t disturbingly different.

*go backs to staring at the layout in awe*
Sometimes I amaze myself. Sometimes.

Finally… FINALLY Protege ontology builder has the ability to create sibling classes. It’s a new feature in the newish stable release, 3.0. For a year almost, after the ontology has grown to such proportions that the subclasses of some classes don’t fit in the window (not even on 1280×1024) , it’s been such a pain in the neck to scroll up and down everytime I want to make a new class.

Until now.

How can something so little (the icon) be so powerful and wonderful, and save several moments of argh-ness?

I’ve been trying to make people use Mozilla instead of Internet Explorer. I’ve succeeded a couple of times, but there is one big hurdle in my way.

People who aren’t comfortable with English, will have difficulties using Mozilla — especially if computers are ominous machines to them to begin with. Mozilla’s Finnish translation is, I hear, lacking (I’m sure the bigger languages have more people sharing the burden of localisation). And the small glimpse I got showed one of the most disgusting mistakes there is. The Finnish localisation project is probably run by computer guys whose grasp of grammar is infamously bad (oh, the shivers I get on every single computer studies’ lecture).

My sister claims Mozilla is noticeably slower than IE on her machine (*cough*as if*cough* she has twice as much Ghz than I do). Maybe she says that just to spite me. Sure pages load slower on the first view in Mozilla because she has all the files in the IE cache!

I would install Mozilla on my grandparents machine but Grandpa doesn’t know any English. I’m having high hopes that Dad will come around.

I’ve thought about offering my help to the project, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the time.

… which is why I also bought Dreamcatcher today. It’s always dangerous to go through the DVD section in sales season (I took a biiiig de-tour to the horror section though so it’s all my fault).

Yesterday we finally got ADSL connection. I forgot it at one point and wondered how the sites load so quickly It’s nice, we’ve had 56 kb dial-up (it might’ve been 28 at the beginning) since 1997, and it was annoying not being able to download programs properly (for example my Java environment is really old because the file sizes are whopping). GetRight which is able to pause and resume downloads only works on IE so I don’t use it…

Anyway, downloads are a rarity, but it’s wonderful to have pages load really snap.

I’m reading Dan Brown‘s “Angels and Demons” at the moment. It’s soooo good! Very addictive! When I get off the bus I feel like walking my nose in the book all the time. Before lectures I read until the teacher starts talking and as soon as they say “let’s take a break” I dig the book up from my backpack.
I've read Da Vinci Code and I have already bought Digital Fortress and Deception Point. I wish it was this easy to get all the Kings in my bookshelf. Then again, it’s better that there are loads of Kings even though it takes time to acquire them.

(The computer guy that came here to set up the ADSL was really cute Like a Gary Barlow in his early years.)

I got my new work computer last week. It’s very spiffy, black and silver. And not to mention fast.

It, however, doesn’t have any sound device installed, so every sound it needed to make (Windows warnings), it beeped from its rear end. Extremely annoying! Especially when the sound was made even when I pressed an arrow key at the end of a file. I searched for the solution and found a nice tip: If you right-click My Computer, choose Properties, Hardware tab, and select Device Manager, check Show hidden devices under View, go to Non-plug and play, select Beep and set it to Disabled, the bleeping beep is gone!

And it IS gone!

*pummels the arrow key at the end of a file*

Today’s lecture for Digital Media Technology was a draaaaag (about tables, frames and forms). I did learn one thing, however: <fieldset>

<fieldset>
  <legend>Some title</legend>
  Content
</fieldset>

Makes a neat looking box:

Of course you can style it to your heart’s content. It’s meant to be used in forms to group data and I don’t know if it’ll tick off the validator if it’s used outside form tags.

The terrorist are threatening to release a small pox virus all over the United States. Sam Fisher has to, as usual, save our (or theirs… the Americans’) butts. He’s equipped (in addition to a limber bod ) with the good old silenced pistol, SC-20K with nice sticky shockers to buzz out the enemies, and all the gadgets from the first game, as well as a new type of grenade to shut off those nasty turrets.

It didn’t take me long to finish this game. That’s pretty much the only bad feature about it: it’s surprisingly and depressingly short (good games that are too short make me sad). No wonder it’s been reviewed as being a sloppy and careless job from the makers of SC between the hit of a first game and the upcoming 3rd, Chaos Theory (March 2005 says the site).
It also seemed easier even though there were some tight spots that made me re-try over and over. I didn’t use many med-kits (I couldn’t have stood his suspicious sounding ‘oh yeahhh’ anyway…) but then again, if you get shot in Splinter Cell you usually get shot for good.

Nevertheless, there are 8 missions in the game and I’m happy enough with that. Sam Fisher has learned a few new tricks — and they said old dogs don’t learn new tricks! Well, his appearance has got more youthful as well. (Where was the stubble? I love the stubble!) Now he can split jump in a narrow passage and jump to a higher platform. Also now there’s a SWAT turn in his repertoire. It makes getting past illuminated doorways so much easier. Once, in Jerusalem, there was a guy sitting right in front of a barred door, probably 50 cm away from the door, and I (*cough* I mean Sam) swirled by. He didn’t notice a thing!

What I missed was a nice oomph of an intro movie and as catchy theme as in the first one (Crystal Method’s Name of the Game).

And of course, it’s Splinter Cell I’m talking about. The amazing, breathtakingly beautiful, refreshingly non-shoot-em-up, wonderfully clever sneak-in-the-shadows Splinter Cell. Finding an alternative route through airshafts or window ledges always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

There’s probably some re-playing value in this “thanks to” the fact that it wasn’t too difficult. In the first game I got stuck in the annoying library ambush and got tired with that (but I played the first levels over and over). I’ll have to see. I don’t have anything better to play anyway, unless I take down the whooping monster in Painkiller. (Jafer, help!)

Website

Yeah, that’s right. 23 years ago this puny (2,3 kg) little (45 cm) thing was born. I’m not puny anymore though, nor little. More precisely, I was born at 13:23 which makes me remember the year of an important peace (“The peace of Nut island” ) in Finland — nifty, isn’t it?

I was supposed to be born on Jan 24th (era of Aquarius) but luckily I wasn’t, because I like being Capricorn. Even tests show I’m destined to be a Capricorn: What Should Your Zodiac Sign Be?

“their nit-picking ways can infuriate others” Noooooo, really?

I’ve been making my own template of this site. Sorry, I happen to like this design for some reason, ain’t getting rid of it just yet. Besides, with the new theme system on WordPress I intend to mess with the core code as little as possible and making my site easy to change style to. I’m now pondering whether I should upgrade to some 1.5 version or not… I hate to miss the tons of tweaking I’ve done to the code but then again, without the tweaking it’ll be easier to upgrade in the future and some of the things I’ve done have legitimate ways of doing them.

Also — you should be proud of me — I’m determined to make my new layout completely CSS (maybe as a result of the secret I’ve been talking about — ah-ha! A hint!). And I’ve actually managed to do that! Yes, all those rounded corners and fluid width layout. All implemented.

I gave up on a table-free layout the last time because I was in a hurry to get the site looking like something. I have a history of table layouts and I’m comfortable with them. Besides, let’s admit it, sometimes tables just do what they’re supposed to do, nicely and across browers. They work for poor IE, too.

Anyway, before wandering off to a completely different topic — ah, look at those pretty lights — I’m going to continue pondering the upgrade and tinkering the theme.

We were watching The Net today, my sister and I. In it, a virus is triggered by hitting Escape when a virus infected disk is in the drive. So far so good. But, posts from an FBI mail server are deleted by escape. Now where’s the logic in that?