DougWeb – Doug's home on the Web

So yesterday Microsoft released an updated version of Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 preview. The key point about this version is that it is ‘layout complete’ - there will be no further changes to the way websites are rendered between now and IE7 final in 6 months time. So far, I’m actually quite impressed with it - especially compared to how beta 1 looked just a few months ago. It’ll certainly make my life easier once it’s finally released, as well as the lives of just about every standards-aware web developer out there. After 5 years of abandonment Microsoft have delivered!

One week later than planned, but that’s life.

Now waiting for the bug reports.

Tracked down a leak bug that was stopping further development to another bug in XULRunner (well Spidermonkey). Found out that it’s already fixed, but only on the ‘unstable’ trunk.

I’m mounting a campaign to get it into the ’stable’ branch that I’m using. In the meantime I can carry on working on stuff that I’d postponed until I got the leak sorted.

From The Times Online via fark.com

By Helen Nugent

A PUB must pay a fine for a murder on its premises more than 300 years ago.

Auditors discovered the long-forgotten penalty for The Swan in Ipswich, Suffolk, while balancing the books for the town’s St Mary Le Tower Church Charities.

The annual bill of 40 shillings, equivalent to £2, seems to be a punishment for a killing in 1664 when Charles II was king.

Rowell Bell is the clerk to trustees for a number of small charities, including Parker Gift 1664. He found the fine in a book called An Account of the Gifts and Legacies that have been given and bequeathed to Charitable Uses in the Town of Ipswich — with some account of the present state and management and some proposals for the future regulation of them.

It reads: “Mr J Parker to give 40 shillings a year to be paid out of The Swan Inn of this parish to buy coals for the poor (to be distributed on St Thomas’s Day).

“The gift is alleged to be for a perpetual fine imposed in 1664 consequent upon a murder committed at The Swan.”

It was a huge amount of money in 1664 — a labourer would have to work for six months to earn 40 shillings.

Mr Bell said: “The money should be given to the trustees and although they won’t still be buying coal, they will use their common sense. I expect, for example, they will pay for poor people to have bed and breakfast or give it to charities which help the homeless.

“I think some people will be confused because The Swan has 1707 on it, and this dates back to 1664. But 1707 is probably the date refurbishment work was done.”

Simon Trenter and Pam Wilson, who run The Swan, have agreed to pay the fine, which includes backdated payments to 1999, when the bill was last paid. Ms Wilson said: “We are all intrigued. We like being part of history.” Little is known about the murder although it is mentioned by guides who conduct tours of Ipswich.

Dr. Crippen is a doctor in the NHS who blogs about ‘life on the inside’. Last week he posted about the care one of his patients received that defies belief. The way this man was treated was absolutely diabolical, and should never be allowed to happen again. If the description of the care he received doesn’t shock you enough, then the accompanying photo after he was discharged will.

NHS Blog Doc

Another example of the ‘care’ that the elderly receive can be found in a posting by ‘Nee Naw’, who mans the 999 system for ambulances in London. Again, absolutely shocking.
Nee Naw.

Things had better change…

Last night/tonight I worked out how to do/use the following parts of Mozilla XPCOM

• Registry queries (also what information I can actually get from the registry and where to find it)
• Locale-specific date formatting
• File and folder pickers

In addition to that I

• Successfully created the first few pages of the new wizard-based GUI
• Finished ripping out all traces of XSLT, in favour of E4X
• Prettied up the outputted navigation list a bit
• Added support for getting a copy of the image folder with human-readable names

I aim to finish by the end of the week.

Earlier this afternoon, I went around to the basement flat of a workmate, to help him connect up his TV to his new DVD recorder (he’d tried previously and failed).

This floor in the living room was a nice wood laminate. The sofas were made of nice plush leather. The walls, were suffering badly from damp, and looked absolutely disgusting with paint peeling off etc. Kinda ruined what was otherwise a very nice room indeed.

The TV was a brand new 32″ flatscreen hooked up to a very nice amplifier and speakers, together with a DVD recorder and a seperate DVD player. Easily £2,000 of equipment.

The signal coming from the aerial was incredibly poor. ‘Snow’ from the analog interference easily overshadowed the picture on a screen that size. Switching to digital, the situation was even worse, since it couldn’t even pick up half of the channels (including ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - channels people really don’t want do without.) For reasons I can’t fathom, connecting a digital-compatible booster to the aerial (a rooftop one, not portable) actually made things worse, and lost an additional 9 channels. The top-quality display was again magnifiying every single flaw in the low-strength signal (blocky squares etc).

I’ve recommended Freesat, since it’s the only way he’s going to get a decent signal.

It looks like February saw record traffic coming to DougWeb - with over 35,000 visitors. And that’s with February having 3 days less than the ‘average’ month. It also saw DougWeb clock up it’s 250,000th visit in less than 2 years - traffic I never dreamed of when I started the site with just a list of my DVDs, and some links to other sites (both still present, if not updated regularly). Makes me realise just how ‘big’ the internet is!