Things That Go <BLINK> in the Night

Do you remember the blink and marquee tags? Did you think they were dead and buried? Did you think CSS had renedered them unusable?

Then think again. See the HTML House of Horror, and tremble.

This made me laugh. It’s a link between two blogs that I read.

Dave says…

Priceless.

It started when I read Daniel’s web design rant. I have always wanted to design standards-compliant web sites, but so far haven’t really managed it.

I’ve been using CSS for some time but still sticking to the belief that you have to use <TABLE> tags to achieve the layout required.

Now finally ( at least on my personal site) I am web-standards compliant (to XHTML 1.1). And if people can’t view my site on Internet Explorer quite like it was intended, so be it.

That sounds like shooting myself in the foot doesn’t it? Well, it’s OK - this site does work in the latest IE browser. All the same, and for what it’s worth, I do recommend PC users to move on over to Firefox, and Mac OS X users - well, stick with Safari.

My site isn’t exactly the most exciting in the world and it’s pretty easy to be compliant on a blog. However, it’s possible to be compliant even on more elaborately designed and laid-out sites. Try the CSS Image Text Wrap tutorial for starters.

I can see the benefits of being compliant. My wonderful content can now (apparently) be viewed more accurately by a variety of different browsers and platforms, and by people with differing accessibility needs.

Scary thought, eh?

Very belated but here’s a public “Happy 30th Birthday” to Sharon Court of Portsmouth.

Julie and I went down to Portsmouth a couple of weekends ago to celebrate with her and Adam, her parents and friends. We had a really lovely time and were made to feel most welcome. A couple of Adam and Sharon’s friends, Andy and Claire, were most hospitable and generously let us stay in their home overnight. We were treated to a grand Sunday roast the next day at S&A’s flat.

Word to you both - we miss you guys. We will try and get down to Portsmouth a bit more often.

Thirty … hmmm … ny turn next.

An idiot voiced his opinion yesterday evening on the Tube. The carriage was jam-packed - more so than normal - and at Green Park a woman got on to the train and then, apparently, made a small gesture of her distaste for the odour of sweat eminating from a guy she had stood next to.

This kicked off a huge display of shouting and cursing. In fact, the level of abuse and obscenity made me think that it was another bloke he was cursing. He basically took issue with her “turning her nose up at him”. She was guilty because she had been “sitting in an air-conditioned office all day”. He was righteous because he had done an honest day’s graft on a building site and this was honest (albeit smelly) sweat.

Read the rest of this entry »

A swimming group has been banned from the pool at Littledown Centre in Bournemouth, after other users complained that they were splashing too much.

Julie and I had a really good evening out yesterday. Food and film.

I dashed from work to get to Guildford and we eat at the Old Orleans bar/restaurant next door to the cinema. Really good food and service, although there was a girl’s birthday party on a large table close-by which was getting quite noisy, with the children wandering around and fiddling with things they probably oughtn’t to. Two of the parents decided to stand right alongside our table whilst they chatted and drank wine, which I thought was a bit rude. They moved on though.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago I read about a new system of making contacts with friends and places with mobile technology.

SociaLight allows friends to join up as groups so that it’s possible to find each other in a local area. The reasoning is that, in a town or city, you are probably never all that far from one of your friends - you just don’t know where they are. SociaLight tells you if one of your group is nearby, so that you can meet up in reality (not just text or phone call).

SociaLight also lets people leave ’sticky notes’ about local places so that when someone else in the group passes by they get the note.

There will be two types of non-verbal interaction initiated by the mobile phone - tap and tickle. This works by sending different pulses of vibration to a mobile handset - for those times when a touch expresses more than words would.

All sounds very interesting. Looking forward to hearing more about this.

Brand Republic 08:30 30-06-2004

Italian sportswear brand Diadora has apologised for an ad that used a clip of the 1985 fire at Bradford City’s stadium in which 56 people died.

The footage appeared in a European advertising campaign, but has since been withdrawn by Diadora after an outcry by Bradford City AFC fans and the club.

The campaign is based around the strapline “the world needs to play more”, and the scene from the Bradford fire had a piece of commentary saying “better 90 minutes of play than one minute of violence”.

However, Diadora has said that the footage was included by mistake, and that it had asked the image library for scenes of non-accidental violence. The ad is being re-edited so that the images are no longer included.

In an apology released by Diadora, the company said that the spot was meant to be an anthem of sport as an instrument that spreads a culture of peace.

“We apologise to all the friends of Bradford for the distress this situation has caused,” it said.

Diadora has offered to be a technical sponsor for Bradford City for the 2004/05 season.