Monday, 27th March 2006

Hello to NetSurf

YAY! NetSurf - currently my favourite RISC OS web browser now works correctly with my weblog, without crashing due to negative indents in my CSS.

Friday, 10th March 2006

More tweaks

I've just tweaked the blog script a little bit more, to better cater for subsequent comments after the initial entry.

And I added a little bit later - lets see if this works....

Just edited the CSS to prevent NetSurf crashing, as NetSurf doesn't like negative indents (to create a hanging indent type effect). Oh well. I'll put it back when NetSurf supports it.

Woo - a name for the blog

Lying in bed this morning, I finally thought up a name for my blog script - and guess what....? I was amazed to find that both the .com and .co.uk were available - so I've named by blog script "ElectricType", which I think is pretty good.

Now I just need to sit down and design a little 'powered by ElectricType' logo.

Thursday, 9th March 2006

One million pounds poorer!

Today I lost a million pounds! Well, I didn't exactly lose it out of my bank account, so it was more of a paper loss, but it was a tad irritating to say the least.

How did this happen I hear you ask? Well, the 'day job' involves various internet matters, including managing domains for people. A few months back I received an email from a large 'international company' who wanted to buy one of the domains I was hosting - and offered a cool million pounds for it!

At that point, I rather wished I owned the domain in question, but it was a clients so, valuing client confidentiality as I do, I told the prospective buyer that I'd contact the owner and pass the message on, and if they were interested in selling they could contact them directly. The client duly declined the offer, as it was clearly worth more to his business.

Anyway....

I thought nothing else of it, until just before Christmas when my control system here alerted me to the fact the domain in question was due for renewal at the end of January - so I write to the original client and tell them, asking them to contact me before the expiry date if they wanted to renew. No reply!

Come mid-january I tried contacting them again - still no luck. At this rate, the domain would expire. At this point, I remembered the offer - perhaps if the client didn't renew I could renew it myself and then sell it and pocket the million?

Come the deadline, still no contact from the client, and I suspended the domain so that the website was disabled - perhaps this would alert the customer? Nope! Still no contact. I'd just have to wait 30 days for the 'goodwill period', re-register it myself and then start booking world cruises!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, nearly 50 days after expiry, the customer finally contacted me saying that they wanted to renew it. Being a moral kind of chap, I duly obliged, saying I'd invoice them for 50 quid hosting fee (bargain at twice the price!) and renew the domain.

Just as my last visions of the million quid were fading, and I was completing the paperwork for the renewal of the domain, I received an email. Only the original guy who contacted me last year, offering the million! Saying he'd spotted that the domain had been renewed so he deduced that the owner wasn't interested in selling it, or letting it expire.

Oh well, time to rummage in the garage for a valuable Rolex.... "This time next year we'll be millionaires"

Tuesday, 7th March 2006

Blog script update

I've revamped the blog script a bit, so that the comments are handled by the main script. I've also tidied up the CSS definitions and usage, so the site can be easily customised in the future.

If you have an editing account, please read the amended notes in the main editing screen.