Thanks for all the kind words I’ve had both on and off-line in the last 24hrs. I’m not so upset today (although I’m in Stratford so it’s not so poignant, I guess), just sad. I feel awkward about making a big deal, as some people must be thinking that it’s not like a human died, but it’s hard to describe the love you have for a pet. It’s just not like anything else. Daisy was a family member, but the feelings you have aren’t the same as you do for human relatives. It’s…different. Hmmm, not so much with the words, then. Thanks again - it really is much appreciated.

I just ducked into HMV to avoid a rainshower - didn’t buy anything, woo! - and was looking at the ‘children’s’ DVD section. As with anything for ‘children’, once the intended age passes ten or so the content becomes equally accessible to all ages. In fact I think that books and films for ‘young adults’ are on average more entertaining than those for the older generation, as they can’t rely on sex / violence to provide plot points, and the story is more thoughtful because of it. There are plenty of films I loved when I was a kid that I still find fantastic. I’d be happy to buy them on DVD, except there’s a problem, and it’s called Disney.

It used to be the case that you would never find the official DVD logo on Disney DVDs. There was a Mickey-Mouse ‘Disney DVD’ logo, but that was all. This was because they would do all sorts of fancy effects with the DVD menus. Some (mostly older, very low-end) DVD players would have trouble playing them, but Disney were covered because they never actually claimed it was a proper DVD. Whether this still happens, I don’t know. I don’t have any Disney DVDs because, and this is my main complaint, the prices are crazy.

The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, The Lion King, The Emperor’s New Groove, Pinocchio…none of these can be bought for under £19. That may have been reasonable when every other film on the shelf was a similar price, but things have changed. If I want a DVD on release day then I’ll pay £20, but if I’m happy to wait a month or three then the price will normally drop substantially. The thing is, you can’t wait for Disney DVD prices to drop, because they actually are ‘Limited Edition’. Try to buy my favourite animation of all time - Aladdin - on DVD today and you won’t be able to without getting it used or from an Amazon Marketplace supplier who still has stock. Disney just stopped making it. Bastards.

Disney are in the business of making people happy, their films are beloved by millions, yet they screw people for all the money they can get. It’s such a shame.

I was just browsing through a book on AJAX, since I figure it might be a useful thing to learn properly. The first page contained a description of the author:

…and has vast experience in the Internet paradigm.

It doesn’t make sense, but I can see what it’s intended to mean, and it’s officially added to the list of Dumb Wanky Phrases.

Lisa’s post says that the new series of Doctor Who begins on Saturday April 15th at 1900. Excellent.

Our beautiful little dog, Daisy, had to be put down this afternoon.

Fourteen years ago we went on a family trip to the dogs’ home. My sister, Jane, had saved up £50 through pocket money and christmas/birthday presents, and with Mum and Dad both working from home by then a dog was feasible. Daisy had been returned twice, once after six months for unknown reasons, and once after three days having “jumped a six foot fence to get at some chickens”. Another prospective owner saw us walking her and asked if we had definitely made up our minds. We had.

It looks like Daisy had a stroke a week ago, and since then she steadily declined. Yesterday she couldn’t stop walking without falling over, but was bumping into walls and doors. Mum took her to the vets, where they ran some blood tests. The results came back negative, which likely meant a tumor, and they kept her in overnight. I was in Solihull this afternoon when Dad phoned to say the vet had recommended she be put down as her quality of life was never going to improve. I met Dad, Mum and Jane there and we said goodbye. Daisy was in a terrible state, and it was awful to see. After a few minutes the vet injected her, and seconds later her eyes closed.

Daisy was a part of family life all through my school days, and she came on every holiday with us. I haven’t sobbed for a long time. I miss her.

To further demonstrate that fate’s a bitch, today is Jane’s 21st birthday.

The BBFC strapline for Alien Autopsy¹:

Contains fake gory images and infrequent strong language

Fake. Yes.

1. a film starring Ant and Dec. Really. [↩]

HMV have Hitch - my favourite romantic comedy of recent years - for £4.99, and Fight Club for £2.99. Gotta stop leaving the flat.

The recently-released beta of IE7 is apparently ‘layout complete’, which means websites should render as they will in the final release (barring any major bugs, presumably). wongaBlog looks fine, and the text-just-not-appearing-sometimes IE6 bug is fixed - woohoo! Fun new features include (full list here):

• Tabbed browsing - I’ve found it’s impossible to explain this to people without it sounding like, well, Windows. They just have to try it to see the advantages
• Alpha-channel PNGs (a type of image that allows transparency at full colour depths - try this page in IE6 and Opera/Firefox/IE7 to see what I mean)
• CSS updates and fixes - just don’t get me started on IE6’s CSS problems
• RSS support and a reader - this should be great at bringing feeds to the average user
• Printing that works - it’ll resize to the paper, apparently(!)
• Generally improved security (including ActiveX opt-in)

Unfortunately, IE7 overwrites IE6 on install. Whether you use Firefox, Opera, or whatever, you’ll know that sometimes you just have to run IE6 to get some broken site working properly. I can’t really afford to lose IE6 access, so this is a problem. It turns out that there is a way around it, but it takes a little setup. Using instructions from here, I did the following:

1. Downloaded the IE7 Setup file
2. Extracted the contents (using WinRAR)
3. Created an ‘ie7launch.bat’ file as described on the site

Running ie7launch.bat launches IE7 in a ’self-contained’ mode, and the batch file clears up all registry entries after it’s closed. It’s awkward, but far preferable to losing IE6 altogether, imho.

I’d hate to be a weather forecaster. You do an excellent job of understanding weather systems that are inherently unpredictable (chaotic, in fact) using physics that isn’t always very well understood, yet everybody thinks you’re rubbish because the view out of their window isn’t what you said.

Having said that, there are times when the whole thing is a foregone conclusion. The rules should be rewritten: chaotic, but cloudy during eclipses.

This is me and my friend Ben, down to a tee. T-Rex needs to be educated in this matter.

The Bolshoi Ballet are in Birmingham this week, and they’ll be performing Swan Lake on Thursday. Tonight, however, the show is called ‘Spartacus’. I haven’t heard of that at all. Who’s Spartacus?

Update: Come on, nobody?

I took my sister to hospital recently, and the parking charge for just over an hour was £2.10. I was surprised, and I can certainly see why so many people are angry. However, I have some sympathy with the argument that city centre hospitals have to charge more than local car parks to prevent shoppers taking advantage. I’ve no doubt that plenty of people would do this, probably trying to justify it by complaining about parking prices elsewhere. I can also see that the NHS would prefer to spend money on medicine rather than car parks, and it seems reasonable to have some kind of charge. It’s difficult to think of an easy system of ensuring that only hospital visitors take advantage of parking, too. I’m not arguing for either side, but I don’t think the issue is as clear-cut as the media seem to suggest.

I know somebody who has entire conversations in his sleep. He’s been overheard discussing the next day’s shopping, for example. I’m not in touch with him any more, but hopefully he hasn’t converted to Islam in the meantime:

A Muslim couple in India has been told by local Islamic leaders they must separate after the husband “divorced” his wife in his sleep, the Press Trust of India reported.

Sohela Ansari told friends that her husband Aftab had uttered the word “talaq,” or divorce, three times in his sleep, according to the report published in newspapers Monday.

Some obscure religious law, no doubt. Presumably this is easily solved? Not so much.

[If] the couple, married for 11 years with three children…wanted to remarry they would have to wait at least 100 days. Sohela would also have to spend a night with another man and be divorced by him in turn.

Hey, look. If it’s what god says, who are we to argue that it’s completely stupid?

Actually, it turns out that other muslims are saying this makes no sense.

“This is a totally unnecessary controversy and the local ‘community leaders’ or whosoever has said it are totally ignorant of Islamic law,” said Zafarul-Islam Khan, an Islamic scholar and editor of The Milli Gazette, a popular Muslim newspaper.

After all, what kind of system would it be where enunciating a particular word could cause a divorce that nobody wants? That would be silly. Let’s all laugh and get on with our lives.

“The law clearly says any action under compulsion or in a state of intoxication has no effect. The case of someone uttering something while asleep falls under this category and will have no impact whatsoever,”

Ah. So there exists a law that says repeating a word three times requires forced divorce, then. That’s not a law, that’s a spell.

Dad phoned earlier to say that Daisy had been brought home safely from the vet’s, which is good They think she may be in some kind of pain, although the vet couldn’t find anything that caused a reaction in her. She’s on painkillers, and if there’s no improvement they’ll perform some blood tests. Apparently there are ways to treat the senility that some dogs get in old age, which is nice to hear.

Pachelbel’s Canon, on an electric guitar:

Superb. Via Egwor.

Update: Following the various links I found that the arrangement was by this guy, who has put the backing track and guitar tablature online. Even better is that the tab is in Guitar Pro format, which means I can see the notes as well as standard guitar notation:

I’m not claiming that I’m able to play like that, but with the help of this I should at least be able to hit the same notes, just twenty times more slowly I’ve only just started playing with Guitar Pro, but it seems to be very powerful. I particularly like that it will loop a section of music and slowly increase the speed of each repitition.