Despite the stacks of work to do, I’m really keen to redesign this blog very shortly. I want to split it up into several areas, which will hopefully filter the content so that it’s more useful. For example, I’ll have one filter for all the posts about Blogwise (I’ll then link from Blogwise to that blog instead of running a seperate blog). I’ll have another about HTML & browsers (since I seem to moan for/against Opera all the time!), and another as a personal journal.

Anyway, this is all ‘in the works’. In the meantime this tool for finding colour harmonies looks quite useful. I can usually knock up a website with no major faults but I’m no designer, and having sensible hues is something I will happily defer to a PHP script!

(Oh, I’m getting into RSS aggregation in a big way, so expect XML…..)

In an attempt to get marks for versioning in our uni coursework I installed CVS and suggested that everybody use Eclipse, a very capable and free(!) IDE for Java.

Since then I’ve grown quite interested in CVS as a whole, and am considering using it for the Blogwise code. Unfortunately I couldn’t instantly find a suitable IDE for PHP with CVS built in. I tried WinCVS but I have had problems with it from day one and it has some odd quirks/defaults.

However, TortoiseCVS is up there in ‘quite cool’ land. When you create a new repository or check out one on your hard disk it recognises this and colours all your files differently within that directory. The files are tinted red if they’re out of sync with the server, then turn a nice green once they’re committed. I’m going to give it a few more days of testing before I start giving it my full thumbs up, but if you’re interested it can be had at http://www.tortoisecvs.org/

A while back I bemoaned the fact that Opera disguises itself as Internet Explorer by default (or at least, does enough to purposefully fool most Javascripts).

Turns out that visiting www.tesco.co.uk today in (undisguised) Opera gave me a message telling me about Tesco Access - a project to let people get to Tesco using alternative methods (Internet TV, phone, etc.). It wouldn’t let me any further without my registration!

Switching to fake IE mode let me straight into their site to do what I wanted to do.

It’s a shame Opera disguises itself by default - I’m sure nieve webmasters would think twice if they saw it in their stats or had a flurry of complaints from pissed off Opera users. Hard to call really. Still, useful Opera has this ability in the first place!

Images (loaded): 18/16

Something tells me not all of the kinks have been worked out of Opera yet.