Duke Street Alley

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I have two identical monitors on my workstation in work. One of them is connected to the video card by DVI, the other by VGA. The differences are quite astounding.

DVI seems to have sharper, clearer colours. In’ve no idea if this is inherent to the connection, or if it’s something on the video card, but it’s making life interesting around now. One one of my two screens, I can distinguish black from a dark navy - that’s VGA. On DVI, they look almost identical, but orange and grey colours that are almost invisible on the VGA monitor stand out bright and clear. There’re a range of shades of light grey that look white on VGA, too. Given we use all these colours in our new designs, making things usable for everyone is going to be tough.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’m finding it terribly irritating that the sum total of CSS 3 features we can use is: zero.

There are several dozen aspects proposed and very nearly settled for CSS 3 which I could use on a day to day basis, which would make my life a lot easier. As it stands, however, it’s going to be years before I can use any of them.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

So we’re just back from a week in Finland. Most of it we spent at Nina’s homeplace, or at her grandmother’s house, but we were in the towns (cities?) of Lahti and Tampere for a few hours each. I’ve not been in Tampere before, and I had a completely different impression of Lahti this time round, so I wanted to write a bit about each of them.

Lahti is more of an infrastructure hub than anything else, so there’s no university there (although there’s a college), nor any port or notable natural features. So it’s generally regarded as being a bit grey and dull. I’ve only been there in summer once (possibly twice) before, so my impressions of it have usually been in the depths of winter, and haven’t been all that positive. This time, though - and I’m waiting for the Finns reading this to give me some funny looks - I was very impressed.

Partly with the shops, which had an impressively wide range of magazines and books in English, and a hell of a lot of music I like, at more than reasonable prices. The Free Records shop had a pile of melodic metal at under ten euros an album, and pretty much everything Iron Maiden ever released. There was also a branch of a craft-and-small-furnishings chain, Tiimari, which had a stunning range of papercrafting goods, paint, picture frames, boxes, and stationery - such that I had to pull myself out before I bought the whole shop.

And then there were the non-mainstream kids. Any other time I’ve been in Lahti, it’s seemed to be a very mainstream city, with most of the kids (or people in their twenties, Finns all look young to me) wearing fairly ordinary clothes - or in the case of the usually rather grouchy looking eighteen-year-olds, military service fatigues. This time, the first thing I saw getting out of the car was a bunch of skater types on a corner, and I saw a wider variety of goths and punk types than I’ve seen in one place in years. I know that goth, rock and metal music are closer to the mainstream in Finland than in Ireland and the UK, but I’ve not seen anything quite like this before. Even in the department stores, there were people wandering around in clothes that I’d have considered killing for ten years ago, and one girl in a bookshop was wearing thigh-high boots with more buckles than I could count. The one guy I saw in military kit was carrying about six huge shopping bags for his girlfriend, and was putting on a brave smile every time she looked at him. So I got a much more positive impression of Lahti than I ever have before.

Tampere got itself off to a good start when we flew into it, since the airport there is a small regional one. It’s small, pleasant, and has no messing around or extra procedures. The town itself is a university town, and that’s evident in the range of shops as well as the bars and cafes. There was one cafe - Café Europa - which was done out in an antique style, with old furniture, pictures and books, and a pile of boardgames behind the counter, which made me want to take the whole place home. And the local games shop - a branch of Fantasiapelit, which I’m familiar with in Helsinki, had friendly staff, a gaming table in full swing, and a range of goods I’ve only seen exceeded by, well, the Helsinki branch. They even had a copy of Burning Wheel on the shelf, though they don’t any more, since it’s here beside me. For future investigation, there’s a Viking restaurant, and a decent-looking sushi place as well.

So, yeah, rather impressed with both towns, and inclined to wonder again why Irish regional towns are such awful places in comparison.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time, and am only now getting around to it. I’d like to draw your attention to a blog about beekeeping, titled “Beemused”. Amanda and Justin (who’ll be familiar to those of you on LJ as cissa and cosmicirony) are documenting their adventures in beekeeping, and doing a sterling job. My father has kept bees for years, and while I’m allergic to and phobic of bees, the whole thing still fascinates me.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’m pleased to point you all at Nina’s site, Rocking Grass, now returned to action with a new design. I may be posting a bit there as well in the future, when food-related topics strike me.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’m having an extremely grouchy day. The cats were PvP-enabled from about five this morning, I have a persistent headache, the Irish news is going to be full of the mechanics of voting for the next few days, and a million small details are annoying me.

However, I’ve found a few interesting bits of web development stuff knocking around that I’m finding interesting, so it’s not all bad.

Roger Johansson has developed a way to make shrink-to-fit graphic buttons in CSS, which look like they actually work properly. His code ends up using four nested spans, which is far from semantically ideal, but I’ll be keeping it in mind for getting out of tight design corners.

And Eric Meyer has developed an ultimate CSS reset,  which I suspect I’ll be putting to use sooner rather than later.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

This is ALA’s annual survey. It’s good and useful. If you work in web design or development, go ahead and fill it in.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve recently begun running a new campaign. Instead of the d20 rules I’ve been using for the last while, I’ve moved on to using Fate 2.0. While the pros and cons of the system are still being ironed out, and we’re still learning it, the campaign itself is off to an excellent start. It’s set in a previously unplayed-in area of my campaign world, in the midst of a war between two island nations.
Nina has written up the first session as proper narrative, and it’s well worth reading: Chapter the First. She attaches a disclaimer that this is a narrative writeup, not an attempt to produce anything polished, but it’s still better than anything I could produce. Go read it!

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

The Cumbrian tourist folk have decided that Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils needed updating. Hence, they’ve repackaged it as a rap video by a giant red squirrel. You really need to see it to believe it (needs sound). While I’m thoroughly boggled by it, I have to admit that it’s damnably convincing as rap.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I found a truly excellent site today, run as a part of an architectural salvage company: Sequential Glass. They sell all kinds of steampunk-esque parts for art projects. I love mosaics and bitwork, and I may have to buy some of these pieces for just that purpose.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’m in the process of setting up a site for Dublin 8, similar in intent to In Ranelagh. If you run or are involved in a business, club night, church, exhibition, institution, or whatever, anywhere in Dublin 8, please drop me a line. And if you know anyone else fitting that description, please point them at this.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

So we were having some trouble in the new residence with the plumbing. Namely, the toilet was backing up. This isn’t pleasant. We had a plumber, who’s a friend of the landlord’s, and familiar with the pipes, come out and look at it. He expected it to be a pretty simple job, since it had happened before, and was a fairly quick fix. So he scooted out into the back yard, pulled up a cover, and attacked the outlets of the junction there with a plunger. Nothing moving.

More tools, he said, and came back the following evening with same. He attacked it with such vigour that the tools (plumbing rods, with a plunger on the end, for those familiar) got stuck. Badly stuck, as in, he had to call a burly relative to come and help him extract it (I was stuck in work). He scratched his head a bit - as did I when I got back in the evening - and we tried to figure out what the hell could be wrong with it. Some water had come up through floor tiles in an unexpected part of the premises, so we figured that would be a good place to start the next time. Armed with that, and information from the landlord that there was a manhole cover in an alleyway behind the garden wall, we went at it on Saturday morning.

I met more neighbours in one morning there than I did in four years in Hollybank. We went in and out of alleys, people’s backyards, over walls, peering down into manholes and shores and vents, and learned more about the plumbing of Portobello than anyone should ever know. Nothing moving.

We pulled up the tiles where the water had come up, and some more tiles hidden under them, and some cracked tiles under that, and arrived at an unknown and buried vent. We plunged that and checked the outflow from various drainage systems, and tried to figure out what the hell was happening. There was clearly a connection between the cover at the back and this newly-excavated vent, because if you plunged the back yard one, the other bubbled and spat - but not vice versa. Water run into the new vent drained without trouble, and every single waste pipe in the place, except the toilet, was fine - but there was equally clearly no problem between the toilet and the underground plumbing.
On the verge of giving up, and muttering vengefully about Dynorod, compressors, and advanced spelunking, we wandered outside to poke once more at the original suspected source of the problem. One touch of the plunger, and suddenly, it began to flow, and was clear within seconds. Triumph!
It was aliens, mysterious Victorian sewage valves, or a masochistic plumbing system which just wanted to be beaten for a while. You choose.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been working on various web projects of my own for some time now - some people will know them from the MMW filter on livejournal - but a few are starting to come up working with other people now. The first of these to get going will be my working with Graylion Enterprises as the marketing partner. Graylion’s site is graylion.net, and you can get to the (not safe for work) adult sections and blog from there. Graylion sell boots, leather goods, and adult toys for the goth and fetish market, and I’m greatly looking forward to working with them. Of course, if there’s anything you’d like to suggest (or like to buy), let me know.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

It’s a minor quirk in what’s otherwise a much improved browser, but I’d  love to know who took the decision to move the “refresh” button from the left of the URL bar to the right in Internet Explorer 7. It means that I lose a few seconds looking for it every single time I go to use it - and then when I get used to it, I can’t find the reload in Firefox or Opera. At least F5 still works…

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve not been online much over the holidays, and when I have been on, I’ve mostly been engaging in PvP on World of Warcraft - there’s a post coming up on The Wizard of Duke Street about that soon.

The holidays started this year on the evening of the 21st, when Nina and I had our solstice dinner, a platter of smoked fish, artichoke hearts, and other goods, and exchanged presents. I got her some Waterford crystal, wine glasses and champage flutes, and a hamper of various good things. The guys in the place where I got the hamper gave me some funny looks when I wanted to add some WoW:TCG boosters to it, but I’ve never minded that. She got me the incredibly awesome Prince August 54mm Richard the Lionheart vs. Saladin cast-your-own chess set, and news of a booking for afternoon tea in the Ritz in London in February. The chess set is going to have to wait until we finish moving, but I keep taking the bits out and looking at them anyway.

The 22nd was the last day in work, and we finished up early to start drinking in advance of the company Christmas party, a dinner in One Pico, with entrance to the Sugar Club afterward. I bowed out of the clubbing, since we were flying at oh-dark-hundred the following morning. The meal was pretty good, and the boss made us all drink shots of tequila in salute to the Chicago Marketeer, who’s leaving us after four years to go back to the States and get married.

We got up early to head for the airport, and made it in good time - which was very necessary, as the queues were insane. We finally got to an Aer Lingus checkin desk, and while the luggage could be checked in all the way, we apparently couldn’t. We were told this was because the second flight in Hamburg wasn’t open yet. We shrugged slightly and went to find some breakfast, before boarding the plane, which took off about 20 minutes late. Twenty minutes at the other end, coupled with trying to find the transfer desk meant we arrived at the Finnair gate just after the plane had left. We went through the various bits of rigmarole necessary to figure out what to do next, and then settled down to wait through the nine hours until the next flight to Helsinki.

We dozed, and read, and had coffee, and bought papers, and ate (Bratwurst! Schnitzel!), and had coffee, and read some more, and eventually got on the plane, and arrived into Helsinki a bit before eleven at night local time. A bus ride to Lahti, and then we got a lift to Nina’s grandmother’s house from her mother. We collapsed, and slept the sleep of the very tired. I don’t recall whether the cats came to investigate us at all at that point; I’m not sure I would have noticed.

The next day was Christmas Eve, which is the day of the actual celebrations in Finland. There’s a well-established ritual to the day, and we went through each part of it in turn, between seeing visiting relatives, putting up and decorating the tree, going to the graveyards to place candles, saunaing, dinner and the opening of the presents from under the tree. I always find the Eve in Finland to be immensely pleasing - there’s a definite feeling of tradition about it, and traditions are one of the things I like most about the winter festivities. There’s also a definite feeling that it’s more a pagan tradition there than a Christian one.

I got some excellent presents, a very fine scarf, a meat hammer with an axe-head on the back, and a very very fine cast-iron frying pan. Having tried it since, I’m able to say it’s the best one I’ve ever used.

We had a couple more days in Finland, at Nina’s grandmother’s and mother’s houses, not doing very much at all, which was absolutely necessary, and then back to the airport at an even earlier hour for the return trip. We found out from the Finnair agent at the checkin desk in Helsinki that the problems on the way over were due to Aer Lingus cutting costs, and removing themselves from several of the cooperative arrangements between airlines - which essentially means that if Aer Lingus are any part of your journey, you can’t check all the way through, and there’s no information available to the other airlines about the Aer Lingus flights. Which meant, of course, that the reason the Finnair flight left without us is that they didn’t know we were on an incoming flight. We’ve one trip booked with Aer Lingus for February, but after that, we’re not going to be flying with them. If we want a budget airline, there’s Ryanair - the national carrier should be something more reliable.

There wasn’t any trouble on the way back, though, since we knew the layout of the airport this time and knew that there is no transfer desk; you go to the next gate and check in there. And we had some more time to work with on the schedule, and then the Finnair flight got in early.

That was the 27th, and after we got home, we spent the day relaxing and having visitors. The 28th was more of the same, with a great deal of World of Warcraft being played. Pauline arrived on the 29th, and since then, we’ve been doing more of the relaxing and eating out.

Last night was the Beaver Row household’s annual New Year’s barbecue, this year in black tie. And indeed, nearly everyone turned up in full black tie, which was very nice indeed. One gentleman even had a proper bow tie requiring tying. I’m always amused by the number of my tshirt-and-jeans-wearing geek friends who own formal wear as well. I must look into acquiring a cravat as well as learning the bow tie thing. And possibly a top hat.

This morning was an excellent start to the New Year, with a large breakfast in Hobart’s café with about eight or ten friends. We occupied a set of tables pulled together in the middle of the café, and I suspect the eventual bill was a wonder to behold. One kind person (not sure I’m allowed name names on that) had an expenses tab for the day for being on call, and put breakfast on it for all of us, which made it an even better start.

Now we’re taking care of various bits of mundane necessity before reconvening in Beaver Row to help dispose of the remaindered goods from last night, and generally relax. Back to work tomorrow, and I think I can deal with that.