Finally remembered that WordPress 2 was meant to be released over Christmas and indeed it has been, along with a new website. As ever, it was a simple process to upgrade from 1.5.x and I got this blog switched over within a couple of minutes (including time to back up the database - just in case).
Well, the quest for sound on my shiny new computer has lead me through a number of emails to Asus who, though surprisingly quick at replying, have basically gone round in circles and got nowhere.
As a result, I asked my brother to check into a couple of shops while he was out and see how extortionate the pricing was on the high street for a Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum or Fatal1ty (as they both basically appear to be identical, the latter simply having the current hip name on it) - I’m not good at patience, so a separate soundcard (that I was going to leave until a few months down the line) was the obvious quick fix.
Anyway, I got a call from my brother who was in Dixons looking at the X-Fi Platinum at £100. Considering the cheapest I’d found it online was £146, I asked him to double, triple and quadruple check the price, but no, it seemed the price was correct and it wasn’t even marked as on sale.
Cut a long story (slightly) short, I’ve got a nice new X-Fi Platinum soundcard replete with separate connector bay for the front of my case and remote control having saved £50 for what must surely be a pricing error of some sort. I can’t see any other reason for the random price cut in a pretty much brand new product except that they might be ditching the Platinum version to just sell Fatal1tys, or that the price is about to come down everywhere and I just found the early adopters (who’d imagine that to be Dixons?).
Either way, I’m happy - I was preparing myself to spend an extra £50 which I’ve now saved. The computer is now as complete as it needs to be for the time being and my first forrays into my new games are psoitive. Happy man am I 
… to everyone. My Christmas goodies this year consisted mainly of parts for a new computer, which I’ve only just got (almost) fully up and running, so the festive goodwill post had to wait until now
The new PC is pretty swish all in all, I just have no sound for the moment which is quite irritating. Once that’s sorted out, I can start to enjoy my new games like F.E.A.R., CoD2, NFS: Most Wanted and Quake 4 (plus enjoying the great speed it affords old favourite Football Manager).
Anyway, hope everyone had a great Christmas and I’ll wish you all a Happy New Year now just in case I miss that one too 
Funny how you come to expect certain websites/apps to be almost infallable despite knowing full well the myriad of problems that can (and often do) accompany web hosting and development.
I just tried to get to my Gmail account and instead got this:
As mildly irritating as it is to not have access to my account (I don’t use Gmail for anything urgent), it’s nice to know even the big boys have server issues (or perhaps not).
Spotted a link to this article on Blue’s News. 2 and a half years after first announcing it, Microsoft will finally stop supporting Internet Explorer on the Mac and we designers will have a more concrete case to put to Mac users that it’s not a browser to use in the future.
Obviously, a well-coded site should work close enough to ‘as intended’ on all recent browsers and if a site’s visitor stats show that Mac IE is a high enough percentage still, it needs to be catered for. However, after a project I worked on earlier this year that absolutely had to support Mac IE perfectly, with no difference in display to other browsers and working off a design I had no control over, I can only say I’ll be glad to see the back of IE5 on the Mac thanks to the seemingly undending quirks of display and dodgy CSS support that drove me up the wall for a few months.
Went to pick up a parcel I’d missed being delivered this evening and was promptly driven into at high speed while queueing on a dual carriageway.
Sounds like my beloved Accord Type-R will have to be written off as the chassis is likely twisted at the back and I’ll have to get checked out for whiplash. Fun :/
On my daily perusal of the BBC News website, I found a link to a new blog - Nick Robinson’s Newslog.
Nick Robinson is the BBC’s Political Editor (following the departure of Andrew Marr for his own programmes) and despite having done the same job for ITV for the past few years, is a pretty good political commentator/presenter.
The Newslog is apparently the first of a series of trial blogs to be run by the BBC and luckily it suits my interest in politics (I’m more an interested observer of politics than an activist).
What’s also interesting is that the BBC have apparently outsourced their new blogs to be run on Six Apart’s Movable Type blogging software. As such, http://blogs.bbc.co.uk/ is hosted by Six Apart in the USA. I wonder what (if any) issues that might throw up in the future, but it will also save the BBC the hassle of developing their own software to guard against spamming on blogs, which BBC blogs will no doubt attract plenty of.
Marvelous! I’d been using a modified copy of the Aardvark extension for Firefox since Firefox was upped to 1.5 as the ‘real’ Aardvark broke, but now Karmatics have released an updated Aardvark for Firefox 1.5 and my life is complete again (note: possible exaggeration present in text).
For those that don’t know, Aardvark is an extension for Firefox that allows you to highlight block-level elements in a page one at a time by mousing over them. The element gets a red border and tag describing the type and ID/class values. You can then widen/narrow the selection as well as isolate/remove it, or play with colouring.
The extension is of unimaginable use in developing websites as it helps you track down hard-to-find CSS problems, or just have a quick look at how someone else has put a site together, so get it now.
… is here. Not long ’til Christmas now, but the weather’s actually warming up here after a brief cold snap that promised snow but only delivered a mild amount of sleet.
Hopefully we’ll get some snow before/around Christmas - cold weather’s not fun without it!