Reasons why Sherlock Holmes was a stoner ►

◄ Hakuna matata, ain't no passing phaaaaase...

I've discovered something - I like wearing my glasses a touch lopsided. It's both more comfortable and more practical - my field of vision is better than it has ever been. I shall be forever grateful to my optician, Mr Riley, and his partner and son. Finally (insomnia-induced headaches aside) I can relax and read, and actually have some control over my general focus and operate slightly less in a state of constant tension. Score! Of course, being wired is what usually keeps me on my feet… :|

The laptop likes having more memory—though its response time seems marginally slower with another 64 meg of SD66, possibly because what's already in there seems to be SD100 :? , but more likely because the system bus, which is definitely running at the lower of the two speeds, has more places to ferret away data and instructions. I be getting to grips with the keyboard (a lot easier to use when actually positioned on a lap than a desk, I find), and I await a Compaq-badged Logitech scrollmouse—the short-cable kids' optical is irritating me by wholly failing to fit or support my hand. Admittedly the short cable and optical bits are useful, but rather secondary to the purpose of actually using the computer for sustained periods of time.

The mouse has been delayed slightly by the unreliability of eBay Billpoint :mad: , which barfed at my initial attempt at payment without any obvious sign of complaint. Still, we learn from it, I suppose. Sitting here with a decent selection of MP3 albums to play through Winamp I'm quite happy, if rather tenderised by sleep deprivation. I've also jumped at an auction for a 28.8kbps PCMCIA modem, which will add a further failsafe to my attempts to preserve email contact wherever I end up.

I now have slightly more idea where I'll be for the first four weeks—G block, Cwrt Mawr. I think that's one of the refurbished ones… in any case, I'll be moved immediately if two-amp fuses are a possibility, on the grounds that I'd quickly burn the place down. I wonder sometimes if that threat (and a need dictated by hardware insurance not to be on a ground floor) was all that threw me into the eclectic flat of K4 in the first year… but too much musing on possibilities is a path to insanity, whether they turned out dreadfully or as great as that one. Time for a cup of tea, methinks. :smokin:

Back at home, I've altered the blog layout code slightly, added in the entries I've been writing to date 8), and started an archival system working on five entries per page. There isn't any particular need for automation, since I update via FTP and haven't implemented a feedback mechanism (I might sometime, but I'm rather busy for now.)

I've just thrown in some heavy code to deal with internal page links within blog pages. You know how it's irritating when sub-page links of the '#' form create new entries in your browser history list, forcing you to click the Back button several times? Well, this circumvents it by using the JavaScript location.replace() function. Internet Explorer 6.0, however, doesn't like doing this with '#'-style URLs, and creates a new history entry anyway... so, to get around that we location.replace() to 'jump.php', which takes a parameter passed to it via the '?' protocol and in turn uses location.replace() to force Microsoft's supposedly standards-compliant browser into compliance... :yawn:

Another thing I'm growing to like is the interesting connective sound dynamic you get from having speakers underneath your wrists and against your thighs as you type. :D It's almost immersive… now, the only question is to what extent I can compensate for a US keyboard layout. As of this morning I also have the PCMCIA modem I eventually scored for ~£10 on eBay; so, with 1p/min internet access from Freeola, provided I can get to a landline, I can pick up e-mail, etcetera. 56.6 modems in a similar line seem to be extortionately priced, and a USB device would likely struggle some on a 300Mhz processor. So, this is a decent compromise which doesn't feel slow for light browsing… a day later and the mouse is also here, being very nice to use. :)

Almost forgot to mention... (yes, I am rambling... more interesting entries are below if you want to skip what's left of this one...) I have a suit. Black, obviously, like so much of my wardrobe. ;) Hey, it goes with anything...

...I was going to sign off here until I got to uni, but it's quite early in the AM and I'd like to upload what I've done so far this evening before I go to sleep. :yawn: I shall attempt a rounding up entry on Friday or Saturday, which will also mean that this block of five entries rolls over into the second archive and I start a fresh page. I realise this isn't the most elegant method of going about things, but it does obivate the need for a database-driven system. It's times like this that I love clean DHTML...

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