Friday, April 21, 2006

Playing Catch-Up!

I haven't posted in a long while, due to the fact that I simply haven't had time - on Wednesday I had to go to Londonderry for the orthodontic I attend and yesterday (Thursday) I went to Belfast to get my plaster cast off.

This means that I'm sitting here in a splint, trying not to think about the (hopefully) fused bones inside my leg. For those of you who have never seen a splint before...I might post a pic at some point - I can't be bothered now!

I managed to go to Tesco's today and I found that someone appears to have stolen the back wheel off one of the bicycles that was parked there:


Haven't a clue why, though...

As I mentioned before, I went to Derry on Wednesday - after the hospital appointment, I went to the Foyleside Center for a bit of retail therapy! I got a couple of computer magazines, including this month's Custom PC.


The Foyleside Center car park - it's a long way down (and I wasn't anywhere near the top!)

Another point is that I seem to be acting as a magnet for low flying planes recently - two have flown over my head in the last couple of days - one nearly crash landed on the road in front of us, before gaining height again and the other looked a bit like an RAF weather plane.

The plane that nearly crashed...
...and the plane that didn't (thankfully - it was over our house)

The RAF plane (above) was interesting, because it flew very low and it looked like it had scientific instruments on board. You can find a full size picture here, which I really recommend you have a look at.

My website is up and running with a test version (not all the links work), so if you want to have a look, point your browser at www.chipmunkcentral.tk. I'm thinking of changing the navigator window to something a bit bigger and cooler, but it'll give you an idea of how the finished site is going to look.

I think I also mentioned that I have new forums up and running, but if I didn't, then I'm telling you now! :-)

You can get to them through the website, which I recommend you do, as it'll generate hits for it, but if the website's down or having problems, then this is the address here. Happy posting!

Wow - I think that was my longest post yet!

David

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Doctor Who

Doctor Who's just beginning now on BBC 1!

The intro music is playing...now!

Gotta go...

David

PSNI

The Police are outside my house right now!

I think they've pulled a guy over. I was looking out the window and this car draws up...they're going...they've gone (phew!)...and a police officer gets out and I thought he was heading for our house!

David

! SYNTAX ERROR ! .... :-(

I'm working on my website - it's going well and everything's working fine.

Well, everything except a JavaScript function, although I've now got that problem fixed...

...after an hour!

I need a JavaScript function that makes a layer invisible/visible when someone clicks on an image hotspot. After a bit of research, I found a solution. It was quite simple and elegant, so I used it. I wrote it into my code by hand and checked everything, before customising it to suit my needs. I checked everything again, ran it in FireFox and clicked on the link.

Nothing.

I changed bits, swapped things in, swapped things out, rearanged the code, checked capitilisation and general rooted around for an hour trying to solve the problem.

I did more research and trawled the web, trying the page in different browsers, but to no avail.

I was about to admit defeat when I noticed something on line 8 of the script:



I'D SPELT FUNCTION WRONG!!!!!!!!!!

Better go and make up for lost time...

David

Tourists!

Agggghhh! Tourists!!

Since I live fairly close to the Giant's Causeway, all the tourists can be seen wandering around, commenting authoratively on things they couldn't possibly know. For instance, I was standing near a Yank one year and heard her proclaim loudly:

"There's the Isle of Man - That's were they hold them races!"

Two problems:
a) She was pointing at Rathlin Island to the North
b) The Isle of man was approximately several hundred miles south of were she was.

Another problem I have is caravans - why do people stuff themselves into a tiny, hot metal box and drive past my house several hundred times? A lot of these people are foreign, so it compounds the problems - they tend to drive like pan loaves (idiots) along the narrow country roads, with seemingly no fear of the high stone walls on either side of them.

Anyone coming the other direction on this particular stretch is snookered, because the caravan takes up more of the road than it should, resulting in some quite spectacular maneuvering from the locals!

Unfortunately, this is only the start...

David

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

New Forum

Quick note - new forum:

clicky

Go visit!

David

Wheelchair Unfriendly

I'm a wheelchair user - I can't walk very far at the best of times, but I've just had major surgery, so my left leg has broken bones that have been partially fused. Sounds painful, doesn't it? Well it is, and on top of that, the tendons have been lengthened and the ligaments are torn as well.

All this means that I now depend on my wheelchair and I can't go anywhere without it, as I can put weight through my leg.

I decided to go down the street today to the Old Bushmills Distillery and have my lunch in their restaurant. We got there OK because Dad drove us, but he had to go to my Uncle's, so he left us there - which was alright because we don't live far away.

Anyway, we had a brilliant lunch (Beef and onion sausages and champ!), looked around the gift shop and then went home.

On the way out of OBD (which is very disabled friendly), it started to rain. We took shelter under a walkway and waited it out. When the rain went off, we decided to go down to the Spar and get some groceries.

This was when the trouble started.

The place is a nightmare to negotiate in a wheelchair - high curbs, gutters, muck, fast road, narrow pavements, cars parked across the dips in the pavement meant for prams and wheelchairs and people nearly running you over.

All in a 20 metre stretch!

The disability rights act may have come into force, but most people are still ignoring it - the world just isn't built for wheels...

David

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

New blog and new link.

I've got my weather blog up and running!

Clicky

Also, if any of you are interested in robotics, this is a brilliant site:

Clicky

Anywho...got to go. I'm still working on the site, but I've abandoned my current web host.

David

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Christmas...in April!?



Just another quick note regarding Northern Irish weather - I thought you might like to know that after yesterday's beautiful, hot, sunny weather, it is now snowing. Quite heavily.

I'm honestly not joking or making this up - NI weather is just absolutely crazy.

David

Northern Irish Weather

This is the first in what will probably be a long series of posts about the weather. Just to show you how crazy the Northern Irish weather is, I'd like to tell you about today:

11:30 AM: Massive hail storm, lots of hail and rain. Very high winds and very cold.

5:00 PM: Totally blue sky, sun blazing down and very dry. Light breeze and VERY warm (I was boiled).

Crazy...

David

P.S. Website still in deep trouble... Time to change web hosts and update my list of bad ones: AddYour.net is now on my black list - don't use them...
P.P.S. Still burning the candle at both ends.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Exhausted

It's the slightly better side of one in the morning and I'm exhausted. The weather was quite nice this morning, but my house is now being battered by gale force winds. My light is off and I'm holding a torch between my teeth to see the keyboard of my laptop properly.

Oh God, I'm exhausted...

David

Friday, April 07, 2006

Bad Things

Just a quick note to say that my website is completely b*****ed.

Damn

David

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Marks and Spencers & the Superstore Wars

I just heard from one of my rumour monkeys that M&S will be opening in Coleraine soon on the site of the old Iceland. Details are sketchy about whether it's just going to be a food-hall or a more complete store, but the money is on it being purely food.

Lots of people would like to see a better range, with a cafe, clothing, cookware and possibly even toiletries etc... but the store won't be very big and I'm willing to bet it will only use the first floor of the building.

On a less secret note, as everyone probably knows, Tescos are rebuilding their store in Coleraine. This, unlike M&S, is multistorey, with carparks being situated under the store. It looks set to be an interesting development, but since it is being built on the site of the current store, Tescos will be closed for a length of time.

I expect the new store will be open sooner rather than later, as Tescos could stand to lose a lot of customers to other supermarkets during the downtime. Asdas has recently opened and Sainsburys is always nipping at the heels of the supermarket giant. Lidl, meanwhile, has opened their new store in the Riverside Retail Park, replacing their old one on the other side of the river.

The other supermarkets will probably engage in some aggressive price wars to try and pull customers away from Tescos when it shuts temporarily, with Sainsburys and Asda duelling, while Lidl, which has always been a fringe interest, continues its already excellent pricing.

Tesco's customers will probably return to the fold however, but if M&S had any sense, they might hit the town while Tescos is down, possibly pulling their customers away forever.

Of course, nobody can resist visiting a shiny new superstore, so in the long run Tescos will probably gain customers!

Ah well, it doesn't matter to me, since I don't do the shopping! Now, where did I put that cheese and ham sandwich from M&S?...

David

H5N1

Well, it is H5N1 that killed the now infamous swan in Fife and that would have to be the lethal strain...

Everyone's going mad and 'experts' are predicting millions of deaths, but only about 100 people have died during this 'epidemic'. I would like to make it clear that I'm not making little of their deaths - I'm very sorry that even a single person has died, but all I'm saying is that people should calm down.

Obviously if it mutates and can be transmitted from a human to a human, we're in trouble, because it will race around the population. Take London for instance, it has a population of seven million people (Northern Ireland only has a population of about one and a half million - crazy, isn't it?) and they're all packed close together, so if one person gets infected, it will rapidly spread.

Anyway, enough with the scares - this isn't a tabloid blog, this is a reputable broadsheet blog...

David

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Bird Flu is here!

I've just heard on the news that Bird Flu (H5 Virus) has been found in a swan in Scotland. They're testing the bird to see if it is the lethal H5N1 strain and, if it does, the country could be looking at lots of measures designed to prevent it spreading.

People are probably going to start hoarding food now, so the weekly shop that I have to do in Tescos tomorrow is probably going to be a nightmare - every newspaper will have a sensational title proclaiming the predicted death toll.

Well, just to make clear - you heard it here first - We're all going to die. See you tomorrow.

David

Forum is online!

The Chipmunk Central Forums have just gone live! I used PhpBB 2 for them, which seems to be an industry standard! It was easy enough to get it up, but now I need visitors to maintain it...

The address is: www.ChipmunkCentral.tk. Follow through the 'enter' page (which is only temporary) and hit 'forums/' on the index page.

It isn't the most elegant solution, but the whole site is still under construction!

Enjoy,
David

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Look on the bright side

It's a lovely sunny morning here in Northern Ireland and, even better, my cold seems to have gone!

Going to continue working on the website and see if I can get a working preview live this week. My robot project is going well (I'm still coding the control program, but there's some movement on the hardware front) and I might even get that finished by the summer holidays!

I'm looking forward to tonight - we're going out to a restaurant for a birthday party (not mine unfortunately!) and, since it's on the coast, I might get some new pictures...

Thinking of maybe starting a blog with weather records, just to show you how damn crazy the climate can be in my part of the world. :-)

David

Monday, April 03, 2006

Sniff




Ugh, I've got the cold and I'm feeling miserable. Ever since my last post, I've felt the cold coming on and now it's in full swing...time to OD on the Lemsip.

*Sniff*

David

Reworking my website


I used to run a website called the Chipmunk Connection and used a dot tk domain name, but it was purged by the unfriendly people at my hosting site. It was mainly due to the fact that the website wasn't visited often enough. This occurred because the website never really got updated, since I had to use the internet connection in school and transfer the entire website to the server off my pen drive - if you've ever tried this, you'll know why the site was a bit dated!

Anyway, now that I have an internet connection at home, I am raring to go with a new updated website, which I am working on right now in Dreamweaver. Better get on with it, I suppose...

David
The New Chipmunk Central Website:
Coming Soon...

Dig out your old music!

I was listening to Franz Ferdinand today (the original album, not the new one) and I realised that I should have been listening to it more. It's brilliant. Obviously that's why I bought it, but I hadn't listened to it in about six months.

After having rediscovered that old album, I decided to look around my music collection and see what other classics I had forgotten about. The search revealed Coldplay's 'Parachutes', Leonard Cohen's 'Best Of', Snow Patrols 'Final Straw' and Whites Stripes's 'Elephant'.

I'm listening to 'Parachutes' as I write this and I feel I need to tell all my readers to go and dig out their old music collections - they might be surprised...

David