What's Doing

Many people complain that Civilization rules their lives. Ciaran had to remove Civ 3 from his machine because he wasn’t getting any work done. Well, back in my day the killer game was Elite. And I’ve got a copy running on this laptop [from the lovely people at newkind]. Yee-ha, there goes any semblance of productivity or sociable behaviour.

Right, it must be something in the water, but talk of laying out web sites in CSS is now all over the web. Dave Winer is asking the questions here, but I’m with Mark Pilgrim, who shows you what you can do with ‘proper’ layout here, he also has some links to very good CSS resources here. There goes my weekend.

So, the latest wedding news is that we still haven’t got the invites printed, the brochures for the venue haven’t turned up at my parents house and my own brother can’t spare the time to attend. Situation normal then, lovely.

Bobo has also been informed that four months is a ridiculously short period of time to allocate to choosing a wedding dress. At this piece of wisdom from Mrs Palmer and Alix my wallet just basically crawled into the corner and cried. I can’t believe that any rational person would go to this much trouble to acquire something that they will wear once and then keep in a box.

If my Mum is still worried about the expense of this occasion I don’t believe anyone else is under any illusion any more. At least I have resisted the phalanx of trumpeters that was apparently a big hit at Julia and Nigel’s wedding. Still, what can at least three months with no income, a nice ‘gorgeous and expensive’ themed wedding and business class plane tickets from Australia to the UK add up to these days? I’d say I’m on the slippery slope to destitution.

Of course she is worth every penny.

Now, where is that balaclava, I’m off to the Macquarie centre branch of Westpac. If anyone asks – “You aint seen me – roight!”

Two things. (that phrase is for Richard Billington, wherever he is these days – possibly Nottingham).

I have had reports that this diary is hard to read. The initial answer is – get a bigger monitor. The polite answer is, I will look at changing the style sometime in the next week or two. You will be glad that the site re-design I performed over Christmas and the New Year made extensive use of CSS because that will make the update a lot easier. If I hadn’t converted the site to CSS the response to these quibbles would be short, blunt and very Anglo-Saxon.

Secondly, in an effort to convince Bobo that I’m not downloading porn every evening I’ve started a programming diary here. In it, I shall describe the trials and tribulations of my contributions to an open source project. Go on, you know you want to read it.

Finally, I managed to achieve something today. Unfortunately, all I did was to update my CD stacker page. Trip on over for top musical listings, and thats about it.

The good news is that I’ve found another Roy and H.G. fan. Step forward Jonathon Delacour. Of course it is a coincidence that he lives in Sydney.

It is 11:20am. I have been at work since 8am. I have sent four emails and filled in last week’s timesheet. I need to either get motivated or get a new job.

Boy bands are tut. That is what this cartoon from the lovely people at UserFriendly epitomises and I couldn’t agree more.

Web site of the day, week – oh stuff it, web site of the year. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce to the sport of cheese racing. Courtesy of the lovely people at MeFi.

Today we are learning about ‘extortion’. Or, more precisely, airline ticket prices. Keen observers of this diary may have noticed that the boss and I are planning a trip to the UK this year. It is necessary, as I believe weddings by telephone are not strictly legal, and without being there I will not be able to see the lovely outfits everyone will have purchased to fit in with the theme of ‘expensive and glamorous’.

So I’ve been researching flight times and ticket prices. We need to leave Australia at the end of June but have no fixed schedule to return down under. We would really like to travel business class because, well, why should I suffer in cattle class? I have a bucket load of Qantas frequent flyer points and an aversion to ever using their airline again so we have the perfect plan – buy an economy class ticket and upgrade using my frequent flyer points. This is where the plot thickens because, according to the money grabbers at Qantas their economy fares are as follows;

• 1 way, economy, 11th February, 2002 – $1481.78
• 1 way, economy, 1st July, 2002 – $2191.78

But the business class fares, in comparison, are;

• 1 way, business, 11th February, 2002 – $6343.78
• 1 way, economy, 1st July, 2002 – $6343.78

Leading me to the conclusion that all airlines are extortionists. Its also interesting to note that business class fares do not vary, but economy class prices are very seasonal.

At these sort of prices I’m tempted to walk. I know its a long way, but really.