Vent of Hearing

How to use CSS to control the view

Welcome to the special stage 2 Experimental version of dellah.com. For a short time only, the information here replaces your normal reading pleasure.

Why?

I split the website into three areas; journal, weblog and creative (vent) because some people like reading the journal, some people like the weblog, some would like the weblog if there was none of that stupid football in it, and some would like it all. This experiment shows a potential way of displaying the content that you want to see.

How?

If you look at the source of this page, you will find the exact same HTML that normally delivers the standard looking journal entries and weblog index. The difference is a different CSS document has been written and is displaying a different view on the data. The main menu link below doesn't change the page you are on, just changes the stylesheet as per Paul Sowden's Stylesheet switcher (see limitation below)

When?

Work on the full version where you can choose exactly what you want to see on dellah is in progress. This is just a taster.

Problems?

Sure. Mozilla Bug 151549 means that you need to do a page refresh to see everything as you should after clicking on the main menu. Internet Explorer gets it right.

Can England win World Cup 2002?

Korea and Japan are hosts to one of the most open and entertaining World Cups ever. Favourites have fallen by the wayside, unfancied teams are performing as teams and top European "Nike" stars are flops.

England survived the Group of Death without playing well in two of the three games, and eased into the quarter finals against a Denmark team that pushed the self destruct button. Suddenly, everyone in England think they can win it. And despite the hype, so do I.

They are over-hyped. The performances wouldn't normally give me too much hope. They are likely to play Brazil next.

Yet, this is the cup for surprises. And England have played well against Argentina and Denmark. Okay Denmark made their own errors and had lots of possession, but they couldn't get through. Brazil haven't played any really good teams yet, and have a suspect defense. If any defense can contain the three R's, it is England.

And if England beat Brazil, who can stop them? Not the errant Spanish and Italians? Only the efficient Germans, who have slipped into an easy looking quarter final with USA. The Germans we beat 5-1.

Reorganising Vent of Hearing

Stage One is complete. Now, in preparation for the magnificent stage two, a little reorganisation is in order. I finally found out how to make MovableType use different URL's from the default.

Validation Error

Currently none of my pages validate because of a problem with XSL and Python. Currently, I'm not sure where the problem lies. I get the following error.

... title='The Book of the Still, by Paul Ebbs' xmlns=''>The Book of the S ...
^
Error: there is no attribute "xmlns" for this element (in this HTML version)

Fair enough. But, I'm not the one putting it there. pyXML is, when I translate my XML document. Haven't found any reference to this, so if anyone can shed any light ...

UPDATE:

1 - I have tested the transformation using Resin and it worked fine, so it is definately something to do with pyXML

2 - At least someone else has had the same problem
Transforming XML into valid, degradable XHTML
No reply that I can see.

3 - Ah ha!

How to Break a Toilet

A slow drip, easily ignored. A gentle flow of water which almost evaporated before it finished its journey. From the overflow pipe to the garage roof. From my toilet.

I ignored it. I had looked inside the toilet to see why it was happening but couldn't fathom the insides. It was all bendy plastic and water. I forgot about it. Two years later, my dad spotted it.

"You should get that sorted out," he said.
"Um, I did mean to." I didn't.
"Let's go take a look at it."

My dad knows about toilets and how they work.

"Ah, the flange[1] is loose."
"Oh."
"You need a new one."

As it was a Sunday and after 4 o'clock, I couldn't get a new flange. My father was throughted in his plans to fix my toilet.

***

Drip, drip, drip. I was looking at garage roof again. Once my dad had pointed out the dripping, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I looked in the toilet again. If the flange was loose, it could be tightened up. I looked in my toolkit for a suitable device. There was nothing labeled "flange tightener" but one particular spanner seemed to fit the flange, and I was determined to give it a go.

Awkwardly setting myself, the toilet bowl was in the way, I tried to turn the spanner. Nothing happened. Maybe, if I tried a little harder ...

SNAP.

Something gave. The spanner went loose, so did the flange, so did the rest of the bendy plastic in the toilet. Water gushed. Everywhere.

My toilet was directly fitted to the mains, so the pressure was quite high. I tried applying the flange where it should be, where it was shortly before I messed around with it. The water emerging from the hole reduced slightly, but didn't stop. With the bathroom starting to look like a set from Titanic, I started to panic.

I rushed downstairs. Having only been in the house two years, I hadn't found the stop cock. I wish I'd spent a small amount of time familiarising myself with its location. Garage? No. Kitchen, at first, no? But what was that small wooden cupboard in the wall? Ah, the stop cock. I tried to turn it. It was stuck.

I really tried to turn it. It squeaked slightly and it moved a millimetre or so. Realising I was turing it the wrong way, I tried again. This time I was able to turn it a few times round before it stopped.

Back upstairs, the torrent had reduced to a slow effusion. I turned on all the taps in the house. This stopped the water. I had won.

After the initial relief subsided, I realised my predicament. It was late Sunday night, I had no toilet and all the taps in my house were running. How much does a plummer cost? A quick phone call revealed £90 just for the call out. I began to get that feeling. That feeling where I want to sit down, watch TV and pretend that someone else had just done something very stupid.

The plumber was very kind and didn't laugh at me when he arrived. He also didn't charge me VAT because I paid cash. That almost made me feel better.

[1] Precise plumbing terms have been replaced by meaningless drivel to hide my incompetence.

Related: How to Repair a Leak Under the House

INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

Just did something very stupid. After installing the latest version of Oracle, I decided to make a little bit more space available on the partition and ran Partition Magic. Half way through, it crashed out with

*** STOP: 0x0000007b
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

Oh dear. Whilst searching over and under my desk for a boot disk, or Windows 2000 Installation CD, I realised that everything was on this hard drive. Every image from my digital camera, all my email, bookmarks and multiple work documents. No backup for any of it.

Luckily, the drive's boot sector simply needed rebuilding, but it took me nearly two hours to find a Windows 2000 CD, boot up on it, start the recovery console, and run chkdsk /r (I ran FIXBOOT for good measure too.)

I'm now going to invest some time in installing automatic backup software.