no smoking day

Just thought I'd put a mention up that today is no smoking day so congratulations to all those who have quit and good luck to all those who will be doing so today. I have now managed close to 160 days without smoking and feel so much healthier...and better off financially....plus...smokings for losers. (my method is still going strong as you can see!)

0 comments - Posted by mark at 11:32 AM - Categories: General

IE8 to play nicer

On hearing that Internet Explorer 8 was supporting standards better, I have to admit that that my initial reaction was "yeh yeh, of course they are...what's the catch?" and right enough there was a catch. As default, IE8 would be using the IE7 rendering engine and to use the new, better standards supporting IE8 engine, it would be neccessary to include a meta declaration in your document head to tell IE8 that you wanted to use it's shiny new rendering engine. In principle, I must admit that I like a part of this idea, being able to target a rendering engine for backwards compatibility seems to be a good idea to me....but there's the problem....for backwards compatibility it's a great idea(IMHO), problem is we're talking about a future rendering engine which will become a current rendering engine when IE8 is released, and I wasn't the only one who had a problem with this, seems that a lot of noise has been made by developers about this method being the wrong way round...surely the default rendering engine should be the most standards compliant one no?....well it appears that microsoft have had a little change of heart and I'm happy to say they've moved it around...IE8 will use the IE8 rendering engine by default and it will be possible to target pages at older rendering engines (IE7, IE6 etc) if needs be. Well done microsoft (you never thought you'd hear me say that did you? haha)

1 comments - Posted by mark at 9:50 AM - Categories: General | Ranting

Be more alert in the morning

I posted previously about how I was now eating a healthy breakfast every morning and am happy to say that i've stuck to the routine and definately feel better for it. It has also, I believe, been instrumental in helping me lose weight. So in the continued search for perfect "hit the ground running in the morning" ability, I have decided to try one or two other things as well. Yesterday I was having a chat with Alex Barton and his suggestion was to just get up when you wake up, now he didn't mean just sleep forever until you finaly wake up, most mornings I wake up before my alarm goes off and, like most other people I imagine, I immediately think "still got another 10 mins before I have to get up" so I'll try and go back to sleep. This morning I woke up roughly 15 mins before my alarm was due to go off so I took the opportunity and got up. Not only did it lessen the morning mad rush, the increased time I had on my hands meant I could relax a bit and instead of panicking about getting everything done, I could focus my mind on what other things I wanted to do today...sat at my desk now after a nice relaxing morning and some breakfast and have a clear idea of what I need to get done today...job done. The next thing I'll try is some form of excersise, I have to admit that the prospect of getting up 30-45 mins earlier to go for a run is a little daunting at present so i'll leave that until the weather's better...hey if you lived in the north east of Scotland, you'd understand!

0 comments - Posted by mark at 8:19 AM - Categories: General

Flex 3 and Air released

The wait is over, both Flex 3 and Air have now been released. I could babble a bit about how cool these things are but i'll leave that to Adobe: Flex 3 Air I watched a presentation on Coldfusion, Flex and Air recently with the Scottish Coldfusion Users Group and although I've been watching these products with a lot of interest, I have become much more excited about what can be done. Have been tinkering with Flex since version 2 and now feel suitably inspired so as they say, watch this space! As for Air, there seems to be more and more apps running on Air every week..I have 2 running on my PC right now, the future of desktop/online apps is still to be defined and a lot of confusion will have to be cleared up but the possibilities are huge, how's about a blog editor? or as we saw in the afore mentioned presentation, an email client...even...a web browser? I know there is a linux port of Air coming soon, I wonder if we'll see a mobile version?

0 comments - Posted by mark at 9:02 AM - Categories: General | Flex

Pixelsurgeon is dead

Just noticed that the mighty pixelsurgeon has come to an end. A source of reviews and usefull news that I have viewed since the start has now ended...in better news, that means that my pixelsurgeon tshirt has surely become cool/retro now...

0 comments - Posted by mark at 10:11 AM - Categories: General

willpower test

So I've just past 130 days of not smoking and today I got a real willpower test. My girlfriend Kathryn asked me to stop off at a shop and buy her some smokes, of course I wasn't keen to do this but I just can't say no to my girl so I went for it. I got to the shop and asked for her brand...which they didn't have and so working through similar brands from my knowledge of smoking they didn't have the next 3 brands either (crap shop, i know). Eventually I had to ask for the brand I used to smoke and it felt so natural just asking for that again and I have to admit that i was thinking back to over 130 days ago. Good news is that I stuck to my method, thought about how shit my life would be if I lit one up and shrugged the whole thing off. This was the furthest my willpower has been tested and by staying strong, I know I'm even stronger now...stopping smoking is hard?...it's as hard as you let it be I reckon.

0 comments - Posted by mark at 11:18 PM - Categories: General

Viru beer recommended by Alex Barton

Great tip from Alex barton recently who reckons we should all give Viru beer a go. It's an "Premium Estonian Beer" that comes in a funky bottle. Being the beer connoisseur that I am, I felt that it would be wrong simply to ignore this and so on my last visit to the supermarket, I spied the afore mentioned funky bottle and picked up a couple to try it out. Yep, liked it but then again, it IS beer!

2 comments - Posted by mark at 9:35 AM - Categories: General