My housemate Colm (aka. Donkey Dolittle) encodes some of his tunes in m4a AAC format which my wonderful iRiver S10 does not play. Last night I put the new Kings of Leon album on but it was in m4a so alas there was no Kings of Leon goodness for this mornings commute. When I got to work I found the very good bonkenc which transcoded them and kept the id3 tags in tact (probably loosing some quality but I don’t really mind that). Good work Bonkenc (classic name!).
Norway trip coming to an end
I’ve been in Norway for the last ten days so expect tons of photos over on halfviking.com over the next week.
Spamtastic
Hello! I am bored today. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at phil@philroche.net only, because I am writing not from my personal email. To see some pictures of me.
Debugging to your clipboard (firefox extension)
I’ve started using Google reader again and came across the truly brilliant Dust Me Selectors extension (good work brothercake). It’s aim is to report on the CSS redundacy on your site. I hooked it into our selenium test suite and set it to run on page load. Selenium closes the browser when done and deletes the profile directory so I had no way of accessing the data (stored in preferences in a json string). A quickly hacked the js
var oClipboard = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/widget/clipboardhelper;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIClipboardHelper); oClipboard.copyString(str);
I set a pause on the last selenium test and then chose view saved data from the Dust Me Selectors context menu. I then had the full report in html on my clipboard and could let selenium continue with it’s profile cleanup.
Developing a Firefox Extension That People Actually Use
I’ll stop venting my anger at faceless corporations now.
There’s a nice write up on the tools needed to write good firefox extensions.
http://www.softwaredeveloper.com/features/firefox-extension-resource-072307/
British Gas are a behemoth calamity
I’ve mentioned British Gas a few times now and suffice to say that the jokers have still not resolved my issues. It looks like they’ve given their website an overhaul. Just like the last one, it is shit and doesn’t work. The login times out. When it doesn’t I can never log in as it gives incorrect password message. I try and retreive my password but I get a 404 (page missing). Then I tried their contact form which fails with system error. I tried all email addresses I found on google and they all bounced back claiming a mail loop. myaccount@house.co.uk hasn’t bounced back yet but I hold no hope for them replying to it. A company with a web budget like British Gas can surely get a login system and a contact form to work………………….Retards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
What do you do. I’ve spent hours and hours trying to sort this shit out and they just don’t give a crap – no matter how high up the chain I go. I can’t really be arsed going down the trading standards/energywatch road but I’m going to have to. It’s been 14 months and I don’t have a bill yet.
A move to another supplier can take between 4 and 6 weeks and as the house is up for sale I’m not too sure if it’s worth changing supplier.
It’s so bloody frustrating, especially considering I don’t even live there any more. In the hope that someone from British Gas reads this and is so insensed with my next comment that they sort out my account I give you:
“British Gas and their parent company centrica, are the biggest shower of apathetic money grabbing wankers ever. Fuck OFF!!!!!!!!”
There now – see what Google does with that :).
Where’s clown number three
What in the name of all things XML have I been up to. Well as y’all have probably gathered, I’ve been relatively offline, what with my new job. Trying to get settled in Ireland, trying to sell my house in Wales and generally trying to get my shit together.
I’ve been going to the gym alot and playing football twice a week (when we get the players) resulting in a loss of just short of a stone. I’ve had a super quick trip back to Wales (booked at 12 o’clock while still in bed – waiting at gate at 2 o’clock) and back at 8 o’clock the next evening. I’ve started the process of importing my car. I went to the Oxegen music festival which was awesome and muddy and awesomely muddy. I’ve also booked my holidays, I’ll be spening 10 days at the family’s summer house on an island in the Helgeland area of middle/north Norway.
I checked the other day and was shocked to see that I have been in Ireland (with all my posessions) for three months and three days. My house has been up for sale for nearly four months and I’ve been in my new job for nearly two months. Time seemed to drag during that time but looking back – it’s just flown.
Onwards and upwards folks – onwards and upwards.
Congrats to my brother who passed (with merits) his Carpentry exams and only has a year left and he’ll be earning more than me.
The clown reference in the title is from the fact that our house is now referred to the “Clown College” where myself Ronan and Colm live.
Old School House Art Group is now live
http://www.oldschoolhouseart.com/
The last three nights I have been frantically building and populating my Mum’s Art Group’s website. I promised it to her months ago and it was due yesterday as a new exhibition started. I built it completely on WordPress (nine instances of it) and integrated with flickr (they can manage all their paintings and photos on flickr). The logo is shit and will change but for release it will do.
The design took me all of 30 minutes grabbing the colors from the logo. Have a wander, some of their paintings are quite good.
Spontaneity re- Edinburgh
I arrived home to Dooley telling me about the New Zealand v Scotland match in the world cup in rugby which was on in Edinburgh in September. 30 minutes later myself, Dooley, my brother and Conor had tickets, flights and accomadation booked.
Now that’s what I call decisiveness. It’s sounding like it’ll be an awesome weekend. It’s a long time to wait though.
It’s all about the banter
I’ve been back in Eire about a month (minus a week working in Wales) and despite the circumstances………It’s awesome (that’s for you Tara). I’ve been doing tons of stuff, mainly revolving around Dan and Aideen (my new landlords) wedding.
There was the stag weekend in Cork. Nuff said.
Nights out with the boys. Back playing football. Taking time away from programming. Meeting tons of new people too.
The best so far was last weekend. It started at 5pm on Thursday when I picked Dooley up and we drove down to Kildare to the wedding reception. We were suited and booted and had a ball. I’ve not got my main machine set up yet but once I do I’ll add a new gallery to Halfviking.com.
After the wedding reception about 20 people drove down to Roundstone in Connemarra where we boozed it up big style. We practically took over the place. There was sing songs every night from Tadhg, Neil from Gorgeous Colours, Phil, Rich and Frank. Much better than a pissed up night in Dublin. There was also plenty of Squirrel hunting too.
I’m all set to start my new job on Wednesday after I move into our new house on Friday. It’s good to be back :).