Yes it’s that time of the year again. The end. Funny to think that exactly four years ago we were all running around frantically buying tinned foods and building bunkers; keeping away from aircraft flightpaths and nuclear stations; blaming every computer nerd ever for their lack of foresight. Everything turned out alright in the end, didn’t it?

The end of the year is also a convenient time to try and see your wrongdoings, figure out what you need to change and how you plan to become better by making New Year’s Resolutions in the desperate belief that you will stick to them this year, that you will be better and you will right your wrongs. And this year I’m no exception….

1. Start off with a nice and easy one. Something I keep promising myself but come January 15th it’s all gone wrong. I’d love to keep a diary, to look back on when I’m older and think ‘I can’t believe I did that’ or ‘bloody hell I’m a boring writer’. Since it’s the year 2004 and pen & paper are sooooo 1997, I will be updating this blog daily from now on. I also promise not to spout crap, and will try and be more interesting in future.
2. Suprising as it might sound, I’ve never actually been abroad. Not even to France. As a family we never really did anything together and I never get a holiday anyway. I’m starting to miss all of this now, and particularly now I am armed with a camera, I really want to go abroad at least once this year. I don’t really want to go to north-west France either, since most of the coastal cities just appear to have become tourist traps now. Either I’ll go further into France, or travel into Europe. Or perhaps even to America or Australia. There are two big concerns at the moment. Number one is the money (or lack of) to do all this, and number two is that I honestly wouldn’t know where to begin organising something like this. Perhaps I should go abroad with a friend who can take responsibility for organising? Anyway, come Dec 31 2004 I hope to report that I’ve been somewhere more interesting than Birmingham!
3. I’m constantly worried that I’m overweight, although I know I’m not fat I really don’t like how much I’ve grown. Sounds a bit…. pathetic, but it really doesn’t help my confidence. I’ve tried going to the gym twice a week with very little effect, I’ve tried eating less (of course) - and I do eat less now, and more healthily too. I’ve also tried swimming and I’m hopeful that that will help. Nonetheless it’s all taking ages. It seems a bit pointless to make a resolution to lose weight, since that’s a constant target, and it doesn’t really help me figure out what I can do. Perhaps making friends with Mr. Armitage Shanks will ultimately be an easy way out. I certainly don’t have the willpower to stick my fingers down my throat once daily to lose weight the easy way - I need a support group for that, so my resolution for this one is to become a cheerleader. They’ve got the whole slimming thing sorted and goodness knows if you don’t lose weight fast they certainly let you feel guilty about it.
4. Back onto more serious things now and, as the finals approach (May 2004), I really need to get down and get some work done for uni. Although I’m riding a quite reasonable average at the moment it’s important that I don’t let it slip. I have my eyes on a two-one. The third year is important, but I’m quite confident about this year and am feeling much happier at university now. Still, I need to make sure I keep going and get the grade I deserve/need. Therefore in the coming few months it’s important that I don’t f*ck up at uni.
5. Finally, the usual goodwill resolutions of be good to all, perform at least one good deed a day, and don’t get too drunk.

There we go. Etched into my archives forever those are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2004. I’ll be interested to hear what yours are too. Please leave a comment

Blogwise has just added its support to the Atom project.

In fact, I’ve already written support for Atom into the version 2 code. As many of you will know, it’s my medium- to long-term goal to make the most of metadata when submitting blogs. In my humble opinion if the blog provides metadata in the form of RSS; RDF; Atom, etc any directories listing it should make maximum use of this information - otherwise, what’s the point?

Anyway, the Atom project looks like a bloody good attempt to standardise the standards! Good luck to them.

Having just experienced Freeview (free UK digital TV) for the first time, this product is looking very tempting! Just look at the features…

It looks like an ordinary game, but then you start looking at the words in detail and realise we weren’t really adhering to the English language. Try and see how many mistakes you can find

I’m really getting into Gallery although Simon has used MarginalHacks Album and it looks quite good.

Bugger. Onyx RSS has gone 404. The author’s website is no more.

Onyx RSS is a very handy RSS parser for PHP, with no external requirements. I use it to read RSS feeds in Blogwise. Now it’s disappeared I don’t suppose there’ll be any support for Atom

Anybody know of any other similar scripts? If none are around I’m tempted to either write my own (eventually) or contact the Onyx author and ask to take control of it, although I’m not the most able of people to manage it time-wise it really plays a key part in Blogwise ergo I’d need to put some time into it anyway!

Microsoft are apparantly considering using memory-intensive puzzles to help fight spam. The principle being that for every email sent, the sender is required to use up a certain amount of their computer’s time to prove that resources have been spent on that message.

The BBC report suggests that when the sender starts the email process, they’ll be asked to solve a puzzle. Interestingly Microsoft have noticed that Moore’s Law - which would mean that in a few years time the cost would be significantly less (as CPUs are faster) - can be avoided if they use memory transfers instead, since memory transaction speed grows at a lesser rate.

In the meantime, Freeserve employ an interesting tactic for their users. They automatically force all port 25 (SMTP) traffic through their own mail servers, so effectively all outgoing mail is logged. This caused me all sorts of problems when I was testing a remote server’s SMTP but for the 99% of dial-up users this could generally be a useful move. I’m not sure precisely why they do it. Maybe they want/need to log all outgoing mail traffic, and any mail traffic originating from a Freeserve dial-up account can be accounted for.

Sounds quite sensible. Perhaps if all IP addresses using DHCP were forced to use their local ISP’s SMTP server it would be much easier to find the origin of the spam - fixed IP addresses would have an owner (somebody would be paying for it somewhere), and dynamic addresses would be attached to a username at any particular time. But I doubt that’s going to happen soon! There’s always tunnelling too, but by the same system you’d be able to identify those computers that were breached. Wouldn’t necessarily solve the spam problem (only stem it?) but would certainly help trace the source.

That gets me thinking - if Freeserve are routing all SMTP through their own server, and Microsoft reckon that a 10-20 second delay will mathematically throttle spam, what if Freeserve (and other ISPs) put a delay on the SMTP server themselves, and prevent multiple connections? Surely that would have a similar effect. Any mail then seen to go through Freeserve’s servers (might need certification?) could then be given a more positive welcome in the recipient’s inbox.

CSS Zen Garden shows us what’s possible with some creativity and a lot of CSS (and presumably a lot of patience for buggy browser support). Thanks Dave2002.

Yes, it’s that time again. I found out today I have all three exams in two days. E-Business Techniques is Friday 23rd Jan 9:30am, Scripting Languages is same day from 2:30pm. AI is the 24th at 9:30am and yes, that’s a Saturday too.

I like the way my exams are very nicely consolidated, but I also am really not looking forward to that sort of intense, multiple-theme revision. Argh.

In other news apparantly all of Southampton University’s exam papers will now be printed in Comic Sans. At first I thought this was a joke, but apparantly it’s true. The University cite legibility as the reason for the font-swapping, but I’m sure these people would disagree with such use.

It’s not often I hold a particularly strong view on something, and it’s even less often I blog about it, but there is one thing when driving that really annoys the heck out of me. Cyclists who ride on the road when there is a perfectly good cycle track running parallel. Cycle routes are generally a good thing for both drivers and cyclists. For foreign readers I’m talking about paths/sidewalks that have been converted in some way to accommodate cyclists or specially built paths that might follow an alternative route to a common destination.

Actually it’s the times where there’s a track that run parallel to the roads that I’m particularly refering to. There’s a prime example of this (as was encountered tonight, in fact) near my home. A road that runs between two residential areas (Peel Common and Stubbington). It’s a 40mph road, quite narrow and curved, so passing a cyclist can be tricky and dangerous. It’s also a busy road, is used by traffic going between Gosport and Southampton. A few years ago the path was resurfaced and widened for cyclists to share the path with pedestrians. Traffic lights were installed at either end of the road for cyclists to safely cross the road. Most cyclists (including myself when I used to cycle to Stubbington) use the track and it’s quite a nice, safe route (field next to it, so no driveways or other hazards either).

So why, with this new route running parallel to the road, do a few cyclists continue to ride on the route oblivious to the risks they are putting theirselves, and other road users in? Is it because they are stubborn, ignorant or just lazy? Of course, they’re perfectly entitled to use the road - cyclists have as much right to occupy the road as cars, horseriders and pedestrians - but this is missing the point. They’re causing a danger and an obstruction that could otherwise be simply avoided if they used the route provided for them.

Comments please! But please, no ‘you’re just a snobby road user who thinks you own and have a right to the whole road’ comments - they’re not really useful to anybody and since I’ve cycled for years as well I’d like to think my thoughts are a bit less shallow than that!

The trusty paperclip. Man’s best friend. I’ve been having a minor fault on my car (Vauxhall Omega) for a while now. The ECU (computer, basically) will light up on the dashboard with a fault and sometimes the car will stall. If you take the car and a loaded wallet to your nearest Vauxhall garage, they’ll diagnose it in return for lots of money. You can get it diagnosed with any garage that carries a small testing kit (about £50) too.

Today, I looked on Google and found this PDF that instructs you to put a paperclip between two pins in your car. The dashboard will then indicate, through a series of flashes and pauses, which fault(s) have been logged. Amazing and free!

Turns out that I have a high voltage on the oxygen sensor circuit. Google once again comes to the rescue; this means that there’s too much oxygen in the system! Hooray, fixing can now commence.

The next stage would be a car that self-diagnoses itself, then repairs itself automatically - if the oxygen intake is too wide why can’t it just close itself a bit, or am I being naive?