What do you think?

Pretty accurate, I’d say. Create your own here, via Jo.

• VGA over Cat-5 cable - Run your monitor over the same cable as your network - could be handy!

Couple of questions:

1. Have you ever pressed ‘insert’ deliberately?
2. When did you last underline anything?

If it weren’t for my brain insisting I want to write for a living, I’d love to go work at Google Not that my programming skills are up to much, sadly.

I barely registered a knock at the door at around 0800. We regularly get parcels and have had eight deliveries in the last couple of days, none of which were for me. As with the last few mornings, after getting up I crept around the corner of the stairs, hoping to see a large chair-shaped parcel sitting in the hall, but no such luck. There was a package on the hall table, but unless the chair was inflatable, this wasn’t what I was hoping for. I said hi to Dad and went to check on my emails. A few minutes later Mum walked past, and said ‘your chair’s in the porch as I couldn’t carry it though the door’. Much excitement ensued. It’s now all set up and my official verdict is that It Is Good. It’s currently getting an inaugural wash from Megan. The chair is stage two of my move to a much more ergonomic setup, since I was having RSI and back problems from the previous arrangement. Now I fit far more easily into the gap under my desk, and sitting here with the chair and the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard is very comfortable indeed - it should be fantastic for novel-writing! I could do with a desk set up for right-handers as the set of drawers on the left means that the keyboard has to be on the far right and the mouse pad hanging off the edge of the desk so am currently scouring eBay for something decent that doesn’t cost the earth.

Also, Opera Version 9 Preview 1 came out yesterday, and it’s great! It’s an early preview and has a fair few bugs, so I wouldn’t recommend downloading unless you’re prepared to put up with a few issues, but for me the new features outweigh this disadvantage. Rich-text-editing is finally supported, so the clever WYSIWYG editors can be used, as well as HTML emails in Gmail¹. The scripting support has been improved too, so swish ajaxy sites like Writely and Meebo are functional, although don’t work perfectly as yet².

Just off for lunch, then I’m likely out working this afternoon. If they ever get back to me about when I should turn up, that is…

1. Oops, Google Mail [↩]
2. You can’t create new documents in Writely, and Meebo’s IM windows are fixed in size and position. These should be resolved quickly, especially as Opera’s userbase has increased dramatically since becoming freeware. [↩]

• Job opportunity - Saying nothing
• The Sect of Homokaasu - GasGames - Some very entertaining little flash games on this website. Via digg.

Another letter from my solicitor this morning. Apparently the housing association have said they will not agree to enter into a Deed of Variation:

as it is an old Stratford-on-Avon District Council Lease

Which, as far as I can tell, isn’t a reason at all. My solicitor is as baffled by this as I am. Apparently we’re now talking to the Halifax in order to get an indemnity policy. I think the problem is that if everybody else moves out, say, they could easily demand the entire buildings maintenance from me. Hopefully there’ll be a solution somewhere!

Also, the housing association are currently investigating all of their properties for compliance with asbestos regulations, and hope to have looked at my building by the end of November. My solicitor wants to complete ASAP, but with a ‘long-stop date’. I think this means that I’ll be able to move in, but the paperwork won’t be completed until the results of the survey are confirmed. I’m not sure what would happen if problems were found; would the price be up for renegotiation? I’ll check this
So things are finally progressing after five weeks of very little, but not very fast. My sister and I are racing to complete on our new residences, but I have a feeling she’s going to win

If you fancy heading over to the newly-minted wongaBlog Frappr Map, and adding a pin at your location, that’d be just lovely. No signup or anything needed, just a nickname and nearest town. Thank you!

Just headed over to Textdrive to start playing around with SQL, and I couldn’t connect. Argh. Bit annoyed at first, as much of the reason for moving to them was their connectivity! Unlike most other hosts, however, both their forum and blog have full explanations for the downtime:

Update: it seems like something happened during an update somewhere near Chicago and it took a hard whack at Level3 and Verio. Even though right here, our network is Level3/AT&T/Sprint/UUNet, just about everything leaves Southern California via Level3 (they

My sister’s evil - she sent me a link to this game. Try to get to the red area without moving the mouse out of the yellow. Neither of us can get past level 3.

I’m doing pretty well with stuff for the flat. Other than the washing machine and desk, everything’s ordered or here already. I’d been told that one of the final deliveries would arrive yesterday, and I was quite looking forward to receiving it as included was a desk chair. I’ve had my current chair since 1996 at the latest, and it’s rather frayed around the edges! Since the arrival of Megan it’s deteriorated rapidly, what with her leaping onto it whenever she wants a walk, as well as lying under my desk and chewing the castors, so a new one was somewhat needed! The company promised faithfully the new chair would arrive yesterday, but nothing did, and now they haven’t replied to my querying email. Grrr.

Just going to play around with the layout a little…it’ll likely be broken for a while
Update: It’s working in modern browsers. Guess which one can’t handle CSS correctly. Hopefully it’ll just be one or two tweaks…

Later: With the help of this very useful article, the content finally loads before the sidebar. I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but it’s tricky when you want a full-screen layout with CSS. Turns out negative margins are the key - with them you can set an element to take up 100% minus 270 pixels, which is handy! The search engines should be far happier with content at the top, and if the sidebar stalls, like happened with the blogmap recently, it’s not really a problem. IE6’s layout still isn’t perfect - I have no idea why the right-hand sidebar margin is slightly larger than in Opera or Firefox - but it looks ok, and that’s all I need. As Simon noticed in the comments, elements no longer underlap the sidebar in IE6. I’d like to pretend this was deliberate, but it was really a happy accident I also fixed a problem with blockquotes that was requiring me to add blank paragraphs if I wanted gaps.

• BBC NEWS | Broadband net goes stratospheric - 120Mbps via airship - cool!
• BuzzMachine

I’ve spent the last hour reading SuperMemo’s fascinating article on sleep. I can’t vouch for the quality of the scientific references, but the information certainly seemed self-consistent and reasonable. In it the author identifies two factors which cause sleepiness:

• circadian component - sleepiness comes back to us in cycles which are usually about one day long
• homeostatic component - sleepiness increases with the length of time we stay awake

and claims that sleep is possible only when the ‘peaks’ of each rhythm coincide. High homeostatic / low circadian tiredness results in tossing and turning, with a high body temperature and your thoughts racing. The opposite is evidenced by a total lack of energy and willpower, with sleep not helping even if manageable.

The article states as fact that the function of sleep is for processing of information without external stimuli, rather than rest. Indeed, it claims that the physical energy gained by sleeping is comparable to that gained by eating an apple. Studies have apparently shown conclusively that sleep deprivation has been causally linked with memory retention.

Ok, so far, so obvious. What’s most interesting are the inherent problems with the sleep patterns of the majority of people. Key to this is that the circadian rhythm has been shown, in the majority of cases, to be 24.5 - 25.5 hours long. The reason for this isn’t obvious, but is likely to be the evolutionary result of millions of years of seasonal daylight variations. Whatever the cause, it’s been demonstrated to be the case. The advent of artificial light and the move to strict 24-hour days throws this system out of whack. Hence 50% of adults have trouble sleeping and getting up on time.

The article readily admits there’s no easy solution to this problem. There is a way to fix sleep patterns, but fitting it in with real-world interactions isn’t easy for the majority of people. The recommendation is, quite simply: go to bed when you feel you’ll fall asleep within 20mins, and wake naturally. This is called ‘free-running sleep’. Clearly, this will cause your waking hours to wander. The author debunks various myths that counter this idea: it’s entirely possible to sleep when the sun is up, if the body is actually tired; the body will not ‘ask for’ more sleep than necessary (as it will with food) if it gets the chance, although this may happen in the initial stages of adjustment; it’s not healthy to have a regular rhythm if you’re fighting the inherent rhythms of the body¹.

The article arouses suspicions on occasion, quoting the ‘half-life of caffeine’ for example, and I’d like to read more on the subject, but it’s a fascinating idea. I highly recommend reading the entire thing - if you do, please let me know what you think.

It would be terribly difficult to adapt such a system - I’m not sure how I’d cancel a lunch date upon realising I’ll be asleep - but it’s very tempting to try out. Maybe I could give it a go during November while I’m writing my novel.

1. ugh, this sounds hokey, doesn’t it [↩]

Have you heard the latest Eurythmics single? I’ve Got A Life, it’s called. Admittedly I’m having a bit of an Annie Lennox thing at the moment anyway, but damn that woman can sing! The only problem with the song is that the backing singers sound like they’re yelling ‘gundam wing’, so I keep thinking of obscure anime