Month: April 2003

It’s been one of those bright! gloomy! bright! days. The view from the office window changes everytime you look up.

When WAP fell flat on its face in the UK, the idea of using a mobile phone for email and internet access being more popular than PC internet access seemed absurd. They are over two years ahead in Japan and according to this guardian unlimited article email and internet access via mobile phone is becoming more popular than PC internet. When you look at the price of a wireless equipped PC compared to that of a state of the art 3G phone it suddenly makes sense. Sure many people use PCs for more than email and internet, but if you don’t, why go to the trouble of purchasing and looking after a large power hungry unreliable, noisy PC when you can do it all from a phone?

I suppose many people were disappointed by the WAP experience, because they had already used the internet on a PC and the monotone/slow/unreliable/non-existent alternative was a flop. Even the 3G experience may seem lame to regular PC internet users, but the difference in Japan is that many people have only ever used the mobile phone versions, because they are more affordable and convenient than PC’s.

I’ll always have a PC because I need it to make a living, but it still seems absurd that I have at home a noisy, slow old dinosaur of a PC humming and crunching away in the corner which I only really use to check my email and look at the news headlines while I eat my breakfast.

Although I think sticking pictures up with these interviews goes to reinforce the CSS is just for geeks argument, this Eric Meyer interview on netdiver has some compelling arguments for designers to start to understand that CSS is for designers too.

edit the file xstartup in /root/.vnc/ to hide the line:-

#twm &

and replace it with the following line:-

exec startkde &

.vnc is a hidden file so you may need to edit the preferences of any file managers such as nautilus to get there.

you will then need to restart the vnc server

mmm that lovely mid-morning hot caffeine saturated syruppy cocktail of coffee beans and floor sweepings

only temporarily, but worrying all the same. I was alright until I got to P, but then it all went pear shaped.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

in case I forget it again.

If you use one of those air machines where it beeps when you reach the desired pressure, remember to hit the “start” button and bear in mind that the machine turns itself off occasionally. Otherwise you will just let your tyres down innit.

The “Oldest religious icon in America” is clearly a picture of a cat.

The date format might be confusing for people in the US, and they look a bit chunky now, but you will live.