July 2004
Monthly Archive
Thu 29 Jul 2004
My daughter has recently learnt to to ride a bike and started riding at the local BMX track. I want to get something that I can ride there too. (any excuse to buy a new toy)
Last time I rode a BMX was about 10 years ago (it was great cross training for when I was mountain biking) so I don’t know what has changed since then. I think that I should probably go for a cruiser as I am quite big, (6′1″, 200lbs, 186cm, 90 kg).
What I would really like is something with a racing geometry, rather than freestyle but I prefer the forgiveness of Cromo over Alloy. But all of the race bikes I’ve seen are alloy.
Any advice: what to look for, what to avoid, web links to good advice etc appreciated.
Wed 28 Jul 2004
It begins here: We all know that the letter E is the most used letter in the english language. We all know the word The is the most used word in the english language. I used ‘The’ seven times in those last two sentences. But ever wondered what the 10,000th most used word is? According to Wordcount, it’s the word ‘Sewing’. Also, my name (Joseph) is the 3191st most used word in the English language.
So here I continue a meme. Take your birthday (mine is 12 June 1973) and put it in American non-y2k-compliant date format -> 06/12/73. If you’re not comfortable using your birthdate, use your cat’s birthday or wedding anniversary or some other less significant date. Drop the slashes and you get 061273. If it’s more than 6 digits, drop the first digit (either 1 or 0) and you’ll get a 5 digit number (61273). If it’s greater than 86800 (number of words on Wordcount), take another digit off (91010 -> 1010) . Enter your number into the ‘by rank’ field on Wordcount. I got anzac. Then look it up on Dictionary.com and provide a link.
Encourage your friends to do likewise 
Post your word in the comments
Mon 26 Jul 2004
Although a good laugh, this isn’t a question that needs to be asked.
What if Mozilla were to win in the end? [via]
The real question is: When will most users realise that there are better products than IE?
This is not a war that can be ultimately won or lost. It is fair to say the in terms of marketshare IE is winning. Stories like this offer great encouragement to the standards proponents.
As long as Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird continue to apply pressure to MS the users will be the winners. This applies to lots of things, not just browsers (not just software either).
Fri 23 Jul 2004
Not to be outdone by the Francophones or Irish, I’ve started a list of New Zealanders using WordPress. If you know any others comment below or email me:
UPDATE: I’ll add to this list as I have time.
Fri 23 Jul 2004
I want to start by saying that this post is not a bash of Microsoft. I think that they produce some fantastic products and have done some great things for computing. However, they are now the dominant player in the market and that does cause some issues.
IMHO The thing that makes MS so good will be its downfall. For me as a user the best thing about MS products is the way they all work together. Office apps all tied to the OS, Mail (Outlook Express) and browser together. From a users view this is fantastic: until there is a security breach.
And that is what is currently woking against them. Security is the main reason I have switched to Firefox and Thunderbird and ZoneAlarm. The problem is that it is a complex system, and the more complexity there is, the greater the likelyhood of errors. The integeration of all of these products can allow a minor error in one product to cause problems for the whole system. Which is now why I prefer programs that are not tied to the OS.
Tue 20 Jul 2004
I don’t pretend to be a grammar expert. However, I frequently handle correspondence in which the grammar is less that satisfactory.
TV, radio, and the Internet are rife with examples of either low standards education or at least terrible application of it. I know that I am guilty of some errors, but I am trying to improve .
My daughter is learning to read at the moment. From an early age she has had excellent comprehension and grasp of spoken English. However, she has learnt by mimicking others and unfortunately she inherits their poor habits. I do what I can to correct these, but I am guilty also.
Some would argue that this is just the evolution of the language. I know that language is evolving, but I don’t think that evolution is an excuse to dumb-down a language as rich as English. Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves sums it up well:
“Ah, but does it matter, so long as we get the gist?” they ask, as if saying something original and profound. “Is conveying a gist the highest aim of language?” I ask (sometimes a bit emotionally). “Correct me if I’m wrong, but cavemen pointing and grunting got the bloody gist!”
Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue gives some great illustrations of the English language and how it came to be. It’s worth the time to read.
I know that there is no w3c equivalent for English (there is for French), but I think that we should try to achieve a good level of grammar and punctuation. We have it for a reason. Use it appropriately.
Fri 16 Jul 2004
I’ve dropped the ‘www’ subdomain from my website. I decided that it is redundant. I guess it is one of those things that hails back to the old days of 1 box - 1 job (i.e. 1 box for www, 1 box for mail etc.)
Now the box my website sits on runs lots of servers, listening for different protocols on specific ports. HTTP request are through port 80 (or https through 443), ftp through 21, pop3 through 110, smtp through 25 etc.
My only concern is that I will lose my page rank on google, vanity search puts me at number 1. The www subdomain has page rank of 6, while the bare domain has PR of 0. I have put a 301 response header on any requests to www, so hopefully google will not penalise me.
Mon 12 Jul 2004
I want to install some other OS at home, but what? I want to be Microsoft independent. I still want all my Windows apps.
I know more about the computer than most home users, but the trouble is that I have 1 box at home that my wife (and kids) also use. I can’t subject them to a less-usable system. It’s not so bad for the kids because they are very young and will learn whatever they need but converting my wife is going to be difficult. I’m still not allowed to remove the IE icon because Firefox is “just not the same”.
I recently found Free SuSE (via) so if I get the chance I’ll try it.
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