Alden Bates' Weblog

So last night I got TSV 35 online - you may note the new format for the index page (you can view either a segregated mode or a straight print listing). Please let me know if you have any problems with it.

As usual, there's some pretty cool stuff: a feature on the Titan Script Books, a piece by Kate Orman on the writing of The Left-Handed Hummingbird, the welcome return of Tardis Tales after a couple of issues absence, and the launch of a new regular column titled Beyond the Book, which delved into the background of some of the New Adventures. In TSV 35, Beyond the Book examines Lucifer Rising and White Darkness.

There's also yet another opinion piece suggesting Doctor Who should rest in peace as a series. He he he :)

So, now I have issue 35 online, I can look at going back and turning the earlier issues into XML and cleaning them up some so they all look spiffy! That should keep me out of mischief. :)

Just randomly, here's a bottle of sarsaparilla I bought yesterday. I post a picture of this mainly because of the instruction at the top of the label:

"Invert bottle before opening". Now there's a plan. A very messy plan. Someone fetch a mop!

I had a voucher for the DVD of the Wallace and Grommit movie The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at Whitcoulls, so I ambled in this lunchtime to pick it up. Which I was grabbing it off the shelf, I noticed they had the complete animated series of Peter Chung's Aeon Flux, so I grabbed that too. Then when I got to the counter, I was told that there was a current special: buy Curse of the Were-Rabbit and get Chicken Run for $5. I have no resistence to that sort of thing. :)

But I did fill up my Whitcoulls DVD loyalty card, so my next DVD is free. But after that, I'm not allowed in Whitcoulls for the rest of the month. :)

Princess Divine Kabore writes:

I am a female student from University of Burkina faso,Ouagadougou,I am 25 yrs old. I like any person who can be caring, loving and home oriented, I will love to have a long-term relationship with you and to know more about you. I would like to build up a solid foundation with you in time coming if you can be able to help me in this transaction.

[Dad died, left six and a half million being paid into Etruscan's Permit In burkina Faso.company(E.P.I.B.F)and Etruscan's Gold company]

Please, note that this transaction is 100% risk free and I hope to commence the transaction as quick as possible, I will send to you my picture as soon as I hear from you.

Yours sincereely,
PRINCESS DIVINE.

100% risk free, hmm? That's enough to convince me! Yes! All my 100% risk free transactions involve a complete stranger offering me 6 million dollars by email!

Ouagadougou? Again? Could Princess Divine merely be Amos Zongo in a dress? He must do it a lot (See also Princess Berryfeso and countless others I saw while googling)...

Mrs. Stella Castillo writes:

Please forgive me if this message comes to you as a surprise I was divinely inspired to pick your name among other names found in the Internet database, after series of prayers or Gods direction.

OMG! The INTERNET DATABASE! The internet has a database?

> select * from Internet where type="PR0N!"
4,563,786,549 rows returned

Hooray!

The new index page design for issues of TSV, as proudly displayed by the newly added TSV 72 is not valid XHTML. If you run it through a validator, you will get an error.

"Why is it not valid XHTML?!" you may cry in anguish. The reason for this is quite simple - the page numbers are displayed alongside each item using a "value" attribute. If you look at the relevant section of the HTML 4.01 spec you'll see that the "value" attribute has been "depreciated". However the writers of the specification did not give an alternative to "value" that doesn't look like arse.

I tried using css to fiddle with li:before, but didn't like the way it displayed the numbers. I'll demonstrate.

Continue reading "Depreciation without Replacement"

This time they pulled the Mazda logo off the boot. I could understand if it was an expensive brand of car, but a Mazda logo?

Humanity, you suck.

Every time I got to check my Yahoo! mail now, this advert is totally trying to guilt me. It's like:

<advert> If you love animals, help free them from cruelty.
* Alden ignores the advertising as usual.
<advert> YOU HATE ANIMALS! WHY DO YOU HATE ANIMALS?! WHAT KIND OF A PERSON ARE YOU?!
<Alden> WARGH! WTF?
<advert> LOOK AT THIS DOG! ISN'T IT CUTE?! WHY DO YOU HATE IT?!
<Alden> *mutter*

I don't hate animals, and I'm sure the WSPA is a great charity, but since I'm in NZ, I'm more likely to donate to the NZ SPCA...

No, stop looking at me with puppy-dog eyes.

(BTW, why is the Auckland SPCA bogarting the spca.org.nz domain?)

I was reading today Dominion Post while eating breakfast when a letter titled "Daleks out to destroy" caught my eye. It was someone complaining about a new apartment block, and only the last paragraph had anything to do with Doctor Who:

Wellington City Council and its city planners - obviously positively divine. They're not of this Earth. Maybe they're from Outpost Gallifrey? Daleks, perhaps?

You know your web site is famous when people writing letters to newspapers in far-flung countries mistake it for the planet! Not that I'm jealous or anything. :)

You can now pretty much see why I haven't posted in the past week by going and looking at the NZDWFC site. TSV 72, the first with Adam McGechan's new look design, was mailed out, so to go with the new logo (pictured right) the site also got an overhaul dragging it kicking and screaming into the 00s with validating xhtml!

At the moment, only the main pages are converted over - the archive of back issues still sports the old look (and the editor's weblog is still using the default WordPress template), but I'll be upgrading those pages in stages as well. The pages in the archive will have a special "Archive" menu to hopefully make it easier to navigate, plus I'll be improving their looks and so on. That should keep me busy for a wee while. :)

The reason for the title up there is a bit of a story. Several years ago now, I noticed that Alexa didn't have any "Related Sites" listed for Tetrapyriarbus. There was a link to suggest some sites, so I did, and Alexa dutifully added them to the list, which you can see here. Fast-forward to now, and three of the sites are now defunct.

So I looked around to see if there was any way to take, say, Flying Pig off the list, or even notify them the site's no longer there, but it doesn't seem like there is... Perhaps Alexa should look at going through their database and checking which sites are still there and which aren't?