I don’t know whether anyone has been following the Writers Guild of America strike over in the US, but it has been going on for around a month now. It hasn’t really affected me over in the UK. In fact, it hasn’t affected me at all. However, it does have an impact on television over in the US. They have been playing repeat after repeat after repeat of talk shows that require writers to come up with topical jokes.

The writers are taking a stand and want money from DVD’s and something called ‘the internet’, which is fair enough. Why should the studios get paid gazillions when the writers only get a small % of the profits? However, a problem with the writers striking is that shows have to shut down. This means that all the people behind the scenes are out of work. The make-up girl, the assistants and even the coffee guy all paying the price, while the writers strike because they want more millions.

A good soul named Conan O’Brian who hosts his own talk show, has took it upon himself to PAY for those people who have not been paid since the strike began. I don’t know whether he is doing it for the brownie points, so he can turn around and say ‘I am paying you dammit, work!’, or whether it is because he feels for the people who work on his show, and has a stupid amount of money to help them.

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Just to let readers know that this blog will be updated at least twice a day from now on as I have hired two posters lowboman and Goody.
The reason I have hired them is because I probably won’t be able to write something up every day, so they’ll give you something to read if you’re bored
I’ll try to post something interesting when ever I can though

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A few months ago I bought an Xbox 360 because Halo 3 was coming out (yes I like Halo that much… anyway). If I recall correctly it was due for release on the 26th of September 2007. I knew my luck was bad, I just didn’t realise how bad it was. The day before release my 360 broke down.
I phoned Xbox support, who I have to say were very good at handling my issue. They arranged for a courier to come and pick the 360 up, all I had to do was find a box to put it in. That is when my laziness comes in. I put it in the original 360 box even though they tell you not to as you won’t get the box back, but meh.
Anyway it took about a week and 3 days to come back, apparently its graphics engine was broken, so they replaced the entire inside of the 360. Ooooo and they gave me a free month of Xbox Live for the inconvenience so it was all good.

On the 18th of November I bought another 360 for my dad. I got the new HDMI enabled premium 360 this time, which I was quite chuffed with.
Now I am presuming that these new HDMI 360’s were made AFTER they discovered a lot of issues with the 360 (and set 1 billion dollars aside for repairs). I opened the box of the 360, it was nice and white with silver highlights, just like my other 360 so nothing new there.

Plugged it in, ready to go and I get a E68 error argh!
So once again I had to phone Xbox support. They’re sending out a new hard drive this time lol.
It seems that the problems with 360s will never EVER end.

Oh and the broken Hard Drive was made in Taiwan, and the working one (mine) was made in Singapore, so watch out anyone with a hard drive made in Taiwan!

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Have you ever wanted to protect a PHP page to prevent people from viewing sensitive information?
Well I haven't but that doesn't stop me showing you how to do it if you ever need to .
The code below is extremely simple indeed. Anyone with a basic PHP understanding will see how simple it is.

All you have to do is paste the code below to the top of your PHP page and change these values:

Here is the code that I wrote, enjoy.

What is interesting about this code is that you don't need to keep logging in everytime you return to the PHP page. It stores your valid login session .

Feel free to post a comment about the simple script, or indeed ways to improve it.

You may test the script here
Username: username
Password: pass

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It was announced by the activist group today that the company known as Sony is re-rated as environmentally friendly in there book. Now this is good news for the Large technology corporation as its major competitors and rivals like Microsoft and Nintendo did not get approval by Green space. Now Green space was not entirely happy with Sony Ericsson because they apparently claimed having recycling programs in countries like Thailand and Russia but when further investigated by Green Space it was found that these programs where non existent and some what of a lie from the company. Sony got the award because they have eliminated certain chemicals form their headsets and plan to take out all deadly chemicals in their phones starting in 2008, Microsoft and Nintendo have no such efforts and were ranked as non-environmentally friendly because their continued use of harmful chemicals in their products.

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Mobile phones being used to hire and fire employees, surf the internet, watch videos and now you can…get an education.

A University in Japan is giving 1,850 students a chance to get almost 100 courses directly onto their mobile phones, in the form of a Power Point presentation. 71% of the University is owned by a mobile service provider named Softbank (so I suppose it isn’t that much of a surprise) and is currently called the ‘Cyber University’.

The head of the University says that “the technology will allow those with jobs or who have disabilities greater access to education,” He also added, “…our duty as educators is to respond to the needs of people who want to learn, even if the course is interrupted by an SMS.”

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It was announced today by the energy company giant Exxon mobile that they have developed a new kind of battery technology for cars in cooperation with a Japanese company known as Tonen Chemicals. The battery’s are a lithium ion battery similar to the ones that are in your ipod, laptop, or cell phone except these lithium ion battery’s would be strong enough to propel a car. There are several companies that are using battery technology in there cars right now but they are not the lithium ion type so they have some major disadvantages. The new battery technology should be pretty cool and will be interesting to see where it goes, it is set to debut at an electric car show in California in the first week of December.

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Google.com is one of the most visited websites on the planet. Today they decided to make changes to how they run business, so that they can become carbon neutral by the end of the current year. Therefore, helping the planet they are most visited on…

They have announced a plan to develop sources of renewable energy that will be cheaper than coal, solar panels will be developed and will run their California headquarters and energy efficient computers are in development.

This is great news. We are constantly being told that the planet cannot take anymore of our C02 emitting selves, so a big global company taking action can only be a good thing. However, I wonder if we will ever get anything like this from them?

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According to Heather Mills we should all drink rats’ milk to save the planet. We should all do this because it will in turn reduce the carbon emissions that livestock produce.
Today in London she said “Eighty per cent of global warming comes from livestock and deforestation. I’m not telling people to go vegan overnight. But if they stop drinking their cows’ milk lattes, maybe this sort of thing won’t have to happen.”

How mad is this woman? Next time you have a rat infestation don’t kill them, milk them! Oh and then kill them.

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How interesting:

Watching the television might not be the most environmentally-friendly activity but Dixons is aiming to make it greener with its new range of wooden TVs.

The Tree-V range of televisions, made by Swedish manufacturer Swedx, are built with natural ash, sapele or beech wood from sustainable forest sources.

They cost £350 including VAT and will be in Currys stores before Christmas and you can reserve them online now on the Dixons site.

“We’re delighted to be the exclusive stockist of the Tree-Vs from Swedx. They are high specification televisions, with the added advantage of being constructed within frames from all-natural, renewable, sustainable, recyclable resources,” said DeVere Forster of Dixons.co.uk.

The LCD screen of the TV is 19in and they’re High Definition ready. They also have built in Freeview tuners so are ready for the digital switchover and HDMI, Component, SCART, PC and AV inputs.

“Owning a Tree-V is a great way of making a small contribution to planet Earth while watching it on the telly at the same time,” Forster said.

PC World, which is part of the Dixons Stores Group, is aiming to have carbon neutral PCs in stock before Christmas. The PCs feature wooden monitors, keyboards and mice, with the central unit made from recyclable materials as far as possible.

…….lol.

Don’t they look stylish…

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XHTML/CSS

Here are my notes that I use when coding a valid XHTML/CSS page. If you see any mistakes let me know

Fundamentals

• Must have:

At the top followed by:

• All tags must be in lowercase.

• All tags (where applicable) must have ending tags
e.g
<p> must end with </p>

However tags like:
<br /> only have to use the short hand version as they do not have content to display in the tags.

• Loading the stylesheet:

Lists

UnOrdered Lists (bullets etc):
<ul> </ul>

To list data this use:
<li> </li>

To change the bullet type add:
Regular bullet: type="disc"
Circle bullet: type="circle"
Square bullet: type="square"

Ordered Lists (numbers etc):
<ol> </ol>

To list data this uses
<li> </li>

To change the type add:
Roman Numerals: type="i" or type="I"
Letters: type="a" or type="A"
Numbers Numerals: type="1"

Quotation lists:
<dl> </dl>

To list the data they use
<dt> </dt> for the term .

<dd> </dd> for the definition.

Anchors

Tag: <a> </a>

To use for lists include attribute:
href="link.com"

alt = use alt attribute to show alternate text

title = use title attribute to display tooltip

Fragments using <a> </a>

<a href="top"></a>

To go to the top anchor, a link would be used:

<a href="#top">top</a>

Image properties

Use the <img /> tag

To include an image use src="linktoimage.gif"

Always have the width, height and alt of the image included in the tag:

To align an image use the align attribute:

vspace – creates a margin around the image at the top and bottom e.g vspace="10"

hspace – creates a margin around the image on the left and right sides e.g hspace="10"

CSS

• Selector
A selector is the tag, class or ID you want to apply the style to

• Braces
{ and } encompass the style information

• Seperator
; is used after each style piece

• Colon
A colon is used instead of =
e.g

font-family: verdana;

Example in separate stylesheet:

Example in xhtml file:

To apply a class to a specific part use:
<span class="first">sample text</span>

The first class would be defined in the CSS like this:

Tables

Tables should be used to present data, and not used to hold websites!

Tables are constructed using the basic code below:

th – table header (used instead of td to bold the header automatically.

tr – table row

td – a cell (can be used in place of th)

colspan="2" – this is used to merge two cells together
e.g

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I came on the internet a few days ago to my favorite email client - Gmail, only to see that it was subtly different. I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly had changed, apart from a few minor font differences.
Since I first logged on to my changed Gmail account I have noticed some problems with it. It is MUCH slower than the previous version (on my system anyway), so much so that sometimes it just refuses to load my mail.

Of course Gmail has entered into the web 2.0 realm, but in my opinion it was always pretty web 2.0 anyway. The changes that they have put in place rely heavily on the users browser and system specification (as web 2.0 does of course), however it would have been nice to have had the option to switch to the previous version from the control panel.

Having said that you can go to (at least for the moment) to https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1 to go back to the old version, however you will have to go to that URL every time you want to use the old version of Gmail.

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I was browsing YouTube when I noticed these:

Doesn’t it just fill you with good happy memories lol?

There’s a magical place, we’re on our way there
With toys in their millions, all under one roof.

It’s called Toys “R” Us!

Soon after bedtime, when dark night-time falls
Geoffrey and helpers stock up on the shelves.

From ceiling to floor, books, board games and bikes
Teddies, puppets and dolls, bats, spaceships and trikes.

There’s millions says Geoffrey, all under one roof
It’s called Toys “R” Us, Toys “R” Us, Toys “R” Us!

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Well looky here. I’ve finally created a blog, and a rather attractive, seasonal one at that, hope you like it .

Oh and if you use IE 6 don’t complain of compatibity problems with this design! If you’re using an out dated browser you have no right to complain, get with the times!

So what the hell is this for I hear you ask (okay okay, you probably didn’t)?

Well this place is basically for me to rant,moan,express my views on certain things, write up reviews of stuff I have used or have seen, and to post tutorials on certain subjects. One of the first subjects I plan to cover is basic > advanced PHP/mySQL. It’s a pretty easy language once you get the hang of it, trust me

Anyway I’ve got to go, keep checking back or use the RSS feed < to stay updated.

Adios!

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