CSS is a finiky old beast

As you can see my blog has a new theme. I'm never entirely happy with any theme I use so I tend to change them on a fairly regular basis. This one I came across the other day while I was checking out WordPress (a PHP blogging engine – very nice). It's based on a WordPress theme called "Almost Spring" by Becca Wei. Looks awesome on a WordPress site but took quite a bit of jiggery-pokery to get it to work with Blogger. As a result I've come to the conclusion that CSS is a pig! Very powerfull, but incredibly unforgiving. Get one little thing wrong and the whole page just seems to explode. Ahhh….. Spent ages trying to get my head around what the CSS was trying to do and then figuring out how to tweak it for Blogger. All in all the experience is pushing me further and further towards ditching Blogger and using a more powerfull blogging engine. I'd love to have categories. I miss being able to categorise my posts But that brings up the whole question of hosting and with me being such a tight bastard I can't justify spending money on hosting just for blogging. I've tried a few of the free hosting providers out there but most of them insert really intrusive ads into your site. Yuk! Oh well, carry on like this for now I suppose.

POVCOMP 2004: Results

For those of you that don’t know, there is an annual competition called POVComp. It’s an art competition centred around the Persistence of Vision ray tracing software (POV-Ray). POV-Ray is an open-source ray tracer that’s been around for a long time now. It basically set the ray-tracing standard for a while there.

Some of the stuff these artists have come up with is just truly astounding. Photo-realistic renderings that you just wouldn’t believe were possible. I was stunned looking at the winning entries. You should check out “The Kitchen” (2nd place) and “Office” (Hall of Fame). They are just amazing!

I played around with POV-Ray for a while when I was younger. Just long enough to realise I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body

Link: POVCOMP 2004: Results

Music thing: TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 3: The THX Sound

Very cool article about how the THX sound came to be created told by the creator of the sound itself.

[ Via Music thing ]

APOD: 2005 May 28 – Himalayan Horizon From Space

How cool is this!!!!

A picture of the Himalayan mountain range taken with a 35mm camera from space! Awesome picture.

[ Via Astronomy Picture of the Day ]

[quote] For the Millionth Time… How to build a Web Part [/quote]

Nice cookbook post on how to get started creating your own webparts for Sharepoint.

[ Via SharePoint from Scratch ]

GMail’s up to 2234MB!

That’s nearly a hundred MB of extra storage in less than a month. I was going to have trouble filling the original 1GB they started with, let alone 2.2GB!

PLIX EMC 3200HD Media Center Edition PC

New nice-looking MCE box from Ricavision.

"The 3200HD comes in a gorgeous jet-black enclosure, sporting a bright blue LCD, front panel volume control knob, a concealed frontside hot-swappable 2.5-inch 80GB slim hard drive for removable data storage, 3.2Ghz P4, 200GB of internal storage, and is equipped with a dual tuner NTSC and ATSC (over-the-air HD) card capable of 1080i resolution."

Price is USD$2400. There's also a non-HD version that comes in a bit cheaper (USD$1999). But check out the feature list:

• Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
• 1GB 400MHz DDR (512MB*2)
• 3.5" 200GB ultra SATA100 7200rpm
• 2.5" 80GB swappable hard drive for removable data storage
• ATI RADEON X300 256MB DDR SDRAM 128bit DVI/VGA/TV PCI Express x16, 1080i High Definition Output supported
• ATSC HDTV w/ Windows Broadcast Driver Architecture Driver 2 NTSC Tuners with FM and S-Video IN
• Dual mode DVD-RW
• Integrated 7-in-1 memory card reader

[ Via eHomeUpgrade ]

Cellphone display used to track down lost hiker

For all of you who use your mobile as a torch… – A hiker who got lost in Shiloh Park in Northern California, called the sheriff for help. A helicopter was tracking her down after it got dark when they asked her to point the wireless phone display toward the sky. The crew found her using night vision goggles to spot the phone’s backlight.

[ Via The Wireless Weblog ]

Working Smart

Found a really good blog from a post on Craig's blog. Working Smart is all about techniques for making your working life easier, Really good posts I've found here are:

Taming Your E-Mail Inbox, Tip #2
How to Start a Blog
Corporate Blogging Guidelines, Draft #2

Definitely a blog to keep an eye on. I've added it to my list

Link: Working Smart

Hooray!!! Remove those damn tabs in MSN Messenger

Nic Wise has posted a way to finally get rid of the sodding tabs down the side in MSN Messenger. Hooray!

You go to Tools|Options|Security and check "This is a shared computer so don't display my tabs".

Simple to do, but it's a strange option . Who cares, they're gone!

Link: The Chicken Coop – And in other news….