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You've arrived at the homepage of Stephen Stewart. The archive is available here for those who want it. This site is happily hosted by Dreamhost. Click for more?

Recent Comments

• Cybez on One's too many an' a hundred's not enough
• Nelly on One's too many an' a hundred's not enough
• adele on And the sky was made black with unescaped entities
• adele on And the sky was made black with unescaped entities
• sharon on Fifteens
• Nelly on Mother is it just a waste of time?
• Stephen on Mother is it just a waste of time?

links to other people's sites

Recommended Viewing

• 300†
  Does exactly what it says on the (comic book) tin. Loved it.
• Little Miss Sunshine†
  Very funny, disturbing (the beauty pageant) and completely messed up -- but in a good way.
• Laputa: Castle in the Sky†
  Story great, characterization a little on the weak side -- though the big robots are cool.
• Porco Rosso†
  Stylish, funny, exciting.
• Grave of the Fireflies†
  Very sad, which was a little unexpected since I didn't know much about it before watching it. Can be a little too slow in places though, otherwise it's very good.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind†
  The story can get a little dense at times what with the various factions, but still really enjoyable, inventive and engaging.
• X-Men: The Last Stand†
  Opportunity, talent, money - all blown. Over 3 films X-Men has hinted of something great that could have been, this last one says "No, sorry - not going to happen". Bah.

flickr.com

Blambot comic fonts and lettering†

Ragwort

They won’t let railways alone, those yellow flowers.
They’re that remorseless joy of dereliction
darkest banks exhale like vivid breath
as bricks divided to let them root between.
How every falling place concocts their smile,
taking what’s left and making a smile of it.

— Anne Stevenson (b. 1933)

0 CommentsMarch 29, 2005

My Juicy Brane†

Anil Dash: The Blog Cycle†
Yup, I think I've ranted along most of those lines at one point or another. Too much time on my hands you see.

CSS Rounded Box Generator†

No more IE 5.x support in Basecamp†

DIY Screen Printing†

State-of-the-art interactivity?†
Jeffrey Veen on 'interactive' design

It ain't that in their hearts they're bad

People just ain’t no good
I think that’s well understood,
You can see it everywhere you look,
People just ain’t no good.

— Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

0 CommentsMarch 27, 2005

Apple Gear of The Future†

Comedy Octopus Sneaks About Disguised As A Coconut†

Pin Up Cartoon Gallery†
Possiby NSFW

Celia Celia

When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on

— Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)

0 CommentsMarch 19, 2005

FIrst Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah! my foes, and oh my friends —
It gives a lovely light!

— Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

0 CommentsMarch 19, 2005

The Rescue

In drifts of sleep I came upon you
Buried to your waist in snow.
You reached your arms out: I came to
Like water in a dream of thaw.

— Seamus Heaney (b. 1939)

0 CommentsMarch 19, 2005

Google Code†

OpenSearch standard using Movable Type†

Microsoft is to release six new typefaces

I’ve been seeing Verdana everywhere recently, sometimes it feel like I might drown in a sea of Verdana, the problem is there aren’t many alternatives. The 6 new fonts announced by Microsoft is good news in this respect, though they’re unlikely to be supported by Macs and extremely unlikely to be supported on Linux this isn’t a big worry for websites, since CSS allows you to very simply support proprietary typefaces and fall back to more generic versions.
On a related note you can now also get a ClearType Tuner PowerToy from Microsoft. When I first tried ClearType it seemed to make type harder to read, the anti-aliasing was colour shifting and ragged, now though with this tuner I get better results and consequently haven’t turned it off immediately. However the TEXTAREA I’m typing this entry into is using Courier, and ClearType doesn’t seem to be coping to well, I’m going to stick with it though and maybe just change the CSS for my MT install to se a different font for TEXTAREAs.

Anyway, here’s a screen grab of my XP machine running ClearType, make your own mind up.

0 CommentsMarch 17, 2005

Trees and Litter and NT Heeps

There are not nearly enough trees growing in Northern Ireland. While eating a fancy burger in Grill tonight we dicussed the differences between journalism and just writing stuff on your weblog. Well one differnce is I can just say there are not nearly enough trees in Northern Ireland and no effort to back that up with facts need be made. Ha. In your face.

Anyway, developers should be obliged by law to plant trees in new developments, they do in the rest of the UK, they should here. Nice tree lined avenues, mmm, like Ulsterville. And more aboriginal species please, no more leylandii at any rate.

And litter, there’s far too much of it. I blame you city folk moving out here to the sticks thinking someone will be along to pick up after you.
And learn to effing drive on country roads will you, this isn’t a speedway.

Why if I had a stick such a bit of waving and shaking I’d do in your general direction.

0 CommentsMarch 15, 2005

Web Hosting Advertorial

If you are looking for web hosting then I heartily recommend Dreamhost, I’ve been with them for about 5 years and they’ve always been excellent. They are quick to respond to my queries (and I’ve had a lot of those), helpful beyond the call of duty when I mess up (and I’ve done that a lot), honest and diligent if things go wrong at their end (which happens extremely rarely).

If you are using Movable Type the basic Crazy Domain Insane plan at Dreamhost gives you all the flexibility to do pretty much anything you want to with MT, and that plan is for nothing (£99 for 2 years at current exchenge rates).

The Crazy Domain Insane plan currently comes with 120GB of monthly bandwidth and 2400MB of disk storage, which is oodles (for sites serving only text like a weblog it’s cavernous - ‘Green’ get’s through 800MB of bandwidth a month, that’s just over 0.5% of the total allocation).

The web panel makes managing your site really easy, putting your site up requires very little work and they have one of the best knowledge base sites I’ve ever seen, it has everything. Use Dreamhost if you’re looking for a host, you won’t regret it.

2 CommentsMarch 11, 2005

Semantic Clustering of del.icio.us Tags (a Ruby script)†

Accessible web design articles and tips†

Disco

Troubled Diva will donate one of your english pound notes to Comic Relief for every site that participates in the Disco Meme. I’ve had a look at the list and I’m sure my choice won’t impress anyone but it’s ‘1999’ by Binary Finary, the Gouryella Remix. Toot toot!

(via Boblog)

0 CommentsMarch 10, 2005

Fame Acadamy

Who else is watching Fame Academy? I bet Stray Toaster is. I thought Debra singing ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ was the best so far, probably a bit to do with the song but still great. Edith still rocks though and Kim had some nice curves on Sunday in that dress, her version of Fairground Attraction’s ‘Perfect’ last night was pretty good too.

8 CommentsMarch 9, 2005

Despair (prepare to cry)†
Come and live with me little dude.

Ajax: Live formatting style preview

Have a look at this example of previewing Textile formatting in a Textarea using Ajax. Nice isn’t it?
This link was posted on the Movable Type Pronet mailing list, which is pretty useful for keeping up to dates with MT stuff like this plugin for correctly formatting poetry, giving you properly indented lines. I hope to bring blue back to life soon, and this plugin will be very handy.

0 CommentsMarch 8, 2005

Zach Braff's Garden State Weblog (Still going!)†
From here I found the song Closer by Joshua Radin, which is just lush.

Communication Skills†

Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2†

Ruby On Rails Thread at Slashdot†

Journalist versus Reporter versus Godzilla

Elsewhere on the InterWeb conversations are being had about Weblogging versus The Media. This conversation is mostly centered around those at the political end of the spectrum. I wish they’d shut up.

“My take is simple: bloggers are part of journalism, whether they want to be or not…”
from GAUCHE

Incidently, does anyone else think you can identify ‘politics’ these days by it’s concentration on the packaging of the message rather than the content of the message? Political results are when you’ve got someone’s head on a pike rather than getting heads together. It’s not altogether surprising then that given such binary thinkers that we’re all getting dragged into this argument.

Listen, I’m just talking here, this is no more reporting or journalism than standing over the water cooler slagging off the weird guy in accounts with the greasey hair. I have no obligation to tell you anything, never mind tell you the truth. I have no obligation to even parlez le lingo n witch u tink I shud, comrade. Look, no contract exists between you or I, this is just me talking feely amongst some friends. Journalism and reporting are speech under contract, a contract exists somewhere that defines the terms of the articles in question.

This is just a website with some stuff I put on it, the software used to display it doesn’t suddenly make it valuable, the ease with which I got it out to half the world doesn’t make it important. If all ‘bloggers are journalists then journalism means nothing, and certainly no-one should be getting paid for it.

In a year or so when the next big thing has been discovered politicos will have no problem laughing at those of us who still have homesites, while they happily ruin some other part of the world.

“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.” - Larry Hardiman

0 CommentsMarch 4, 2005

Cows Bear Grudges†
Apparently cows have a "complex mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited by intellectual challenges".

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou†
This is a funny film. It's not quite Tenenbaums but still very good. Cate Blanchett is hot.

Acts of Gord†
From the archive, via Stray Toaster

SAJAX - Simple AJAX Toolkit for PHP†
AJAX is what the kids are calling XMLHTTPRequest (Advanced Javascript and XML)

Beatles Mash Ups†
Try 'I Want a Spirit Machine': The Beatles - I Want to Tell You, Golldfrapp - Strict Machine & Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky

Yahoo! Search Developer Network and Search Web Services†

Baby Steps Guide to Using XMLHttpRequest†

FA Cup Fifth Round Reply: Sheff Utd v Arsenal

I started off slouched in the armchair, Golden Monkey tea to my left, fruit shortcakes to the right, to the 3 wise men in the studio and their collective backing of The Blades I said “Pfft!” we may be down, but we’re not out. Yet.

The slouch soon left me, arms and legs sprayed in horror as Tonge gets a chance from 5 yards and misses. Now I’m the Octopus, limbs left hanging everywhere, this is post trauma slouching. Slowly, surely, as if at the mercy of some great butt-magnet I am drawn to the edge of the armchair, teetering on the brink. Over the course of the game I am hunkered in the armchair, perched on the back, hiding behind it and finally standing in it, somewhat like Napolean.

Sheffield United 0 - 0 Arsenal (aet), Arsenal win 4 - 2 on penalties, Almunia making 3 (3!) great saves.

0 CommentsMarch 1, 2005