I gave blood today….490ml of the stuff. I got a free lunch out of it too and we all know that free food is definitely a good thing. I went out on saturday with the lads and carnage is all I have to say… great craic. When I got home the next morning after Gary and myself spending the night in the car, I locked my keys in the car. "So what did you do?" I hear you ask…well my friends I broke into my own car. It was surprisingly easy. The keys were sitting on the passenger seat so I bent the passenger door back enough to get a wire in, I then hooked the keys onto the wire and pulled them up to the top of the window. I then bent the door back just enough to get the keys out. I then opened the door and bent it back into place. Granted I didn't break in properly but It wouldn't have been hard and it only took about 4-5 minutes to do what i did. I'm a beginner at it so I can oly imagine how fast the pros can do it. Beware the car thief people….. Beware.

It seems to be a common problem with the Wysiwyg editor's code that I used for my weblog editor; that it doesn't work on any browser other than Internet Explorer. Update: 3:49pm; I eventually found a solution…Now what I do is check the clients  browser using the PHP environment variable "$HTTP_USER_AGENT" and depending on the value returned, include the appropriate file. If the User Agent (browser) is IE then the WYSIWYG editor is included else a plain textarea editor is included. Praise PHP.

Finally I got most of my web pages to display properly different browsers. Although a big thorn in the the lions foot (the lion being me) is that my weblog update editor page does not work on Mozilla so I'll have to have a look at that.
Mozillav1.1 Internet Explorer 6.0

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/tutorials/HowToWriteUnmaintainableCode.pdf is a very funnty article but I'm afraid it is only programmers that will find it funny. The motive for the article is put simply in the opening paragraph.:

"Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even
guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell
of maintaining the code."

As I mentioned ste was able to get a hold of some wireless equipment for me and i have it set up and running now. It's sweet. I haven't set up internet sharing yet but it is on my list as this would be a huge benifit
Update (8:16pm). Internet sharing is now operational after a bit of IP adress Jiggery Pokery. Right now i can use remote desktop, browse and alter files and use printers. I tested the throughput of the connection and it stands at about 5mb/s which is good considering the data is travelling through the ceiling of my bedroom. I have found one site that is quite usefull when it comes to setting up wireless: http://www.practicallynetworked.com . Not much else to report so I bid you adieu.

Right then; I know i haven't been posting alot lately but this one should make up for it as i have loads of news. I've updated my weblog archive , you can now click on any day that has a blog and view only that day. You can also navigate through the months by either clicking on the months on the horizontal menu or my clicking on the "<<" and ">>" above the calendar. I've also made a list of all the upcoming deadlines for college here. My mate ste has been able to get a hold of a lorry load of Wireless equipment so i will be setting that up at home as soon as I get a chance. I've also finished and submitted my 4th year project proposal you can see it here. My main 4th year project page is at http://rss.philroche.net . Well done to that lads (Colm Dooley and Alan Keogh) for eventually getting around to getting the Myrtle Beach 2001 website up and running ; it's a hoot [now fully equiped with hit counter courtesy of yours truly]. I've no more business today so I'll leave you with a quote I found while researching :

"everyone programs at at least a level above that at which they are competant."

1. 4th Year Project Preparation [CA465] Project is due on the 21st November.
2. Software Metrics and OO Design [CA421] Project is due 25th November.
3. Multimedia Information Retrieval [CA437] Idea is due 29th November.
4. Advanced Databases [CA419] Project is due 6th December.
5. 4th year Project Functional Spec is due 9th December.
6. Multimedia Information Retrieval [CA437] Project is due 20th December.
7. Cryptography [CA416] Project's due the end of January.
8. Semester 1 Exams 13 January.
9. 4th Year project due 6th May.
10. Semester 2 Exams 12th May.
11. 4th Year Project Demo on 26th May.

The project RSS Feed Aggregator project proposal is now complete and can be seen here. The project is basically a fully featured RSS feed reader written using Mozilla's XUL language and Javascript (possibly c++too). XUL is a language used for creating user interfaces to programs that are run within the Mozilla browser. XUL is pronounced zool(for any of you that had an Atari or Amiga back in the day this image should bring back some memories [it does for me any way]). The project's progress will be discussed on the project weblog. I will also soon be posting these blogs as an RSS feed for those of you who use radio or any other rss aggregators. (Note: soon you will be able to use the one I am developing). Introductions to XUL and RSS and any other related languages or technologies will soon be appearing on the main project page here.

Well the first project that I had planned with Intel has fallen through but I have a new project with intel in the Pipline that I am very interested in. The new project is an RSS feed reader and weblog poster. I hope to integrate it with MS Outllok 2002. I will write the application/add-in and web service in C#. I will use SQL server 2000 and Visual studio.NET to achieve this.
Update as of 01 November 2002:
The project has changed yet again. I will now be developing a news aggregator using XUL which is an XML language used for User Interfaces in the Mozilla Browser. XUL uses ECMA script as it's scripting language. ECMA script is a stricter version of Javascript and is sometimes referred to as Javascript. Check out http://www.xulplanet.com/ to find out more about XUL.