New layout

+-----------------+       +-----------------+
|      TITLE      |       |      TITLE      | 
+-----+-----+-----+       +--------+--------+
|YEAR1|YEAR2|YEAR3|       |  SEM I | SEM II |
+--+--+--+--+--+--|       +--------+--------+
| I|II| I|II| I|II|       |      YEAR 1     |
+--+--+--+--+--+--|       +--------+--------+
|01|07|  12 |  |  |       |   01   |   07   |
+--+--+--+--+23|29|       +--------+--------+
|02|08|  |  |  |  |       |   02   |   08   |
+--+--+13|18+--+--|       +--------+--------+
|03|  |  |  |24|30|       |   03   |        |
+--+09+--+--+--+--+       +--------+   09   |
|04|  |14|19|25|31|       |   04   |        |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+       +--------+--------+
|05|10|15|20|26|32|       |   05   |   10   |
|--+--+--+--+--+--+       +--------+--------+
|06|11|16|21|27|33|       |   06   |   11   |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+       +--------+--------+
|     |17|22|28|34|       |      YEAR 2     |
+-----+--+--+--+--+       +--------+--------+
|XXXX SUBMIT XXXXX|       |       12        |
+-----------------+       +--------+--------+
                          |   13   |   18   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   14   |   19   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   15   |   20   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   16   |   21   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   17   |   22   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |      YEAR 3     |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   23   |   28   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   24   |   29   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   25   |   30   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   26   |   31   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |   27   |   32   |
                          +--------+--------+
                          |XXXX SUBMIT XXXXX|
                          +-----------------+

So I altered the layout of the module selection page in the early dissertation stuff to avoid lots and lots of scrolling across, as it's nasty and inefficient. Hopefully this is a little more logical. I'm also thinking that the page can submit to itself rather than having to pass the variables to another page... I'll have to see how that works once I get it all sorted out properly .

New plan

So I got a lift back home with a mate and came up with the final plan for my dissertation. Bugger SVG; I'm gonna play with XMLHttpRequest!

I've come up with an introduction and it'll be on here soon enough. I think It's jolly exciting and will compare and contrast dynamic sites using a combination of PHP, PHP Text DB API, MySQL, JSON and AJAX. Should be nice to do and will be based on stuff that I did as a research assistant at APU.

Ratatouille... made from 100% pure rats

1 huge aubergine
3 huge courgettes
4 ripe tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 big red onion
Olive oil
Salt & pepper
Mixed herbs
Tomato puree

1. Sprinkle salt on sliced aubergine and leave to stand for half an hour (This takes the bitterness away... apparently )

2. Wash salt off and fry with the rest of the vegetables in a big wok until things look like they're "getting there".

3. Add everything else and a bit of water, cover and simmer for 20 mins.

4. Scoff the lot right quick!

Where did XML come from?

Seems I might have been wrong about the roots of XML according to an interview with one of it's creators. Ho Hum.

2 B or not C of E

So I went to this excellent talk last night about the future of the Church for the next few years (Was originally going to be 10 but then got changed to 10-20 years) at the Blue Lion in Hardwick... nevermind!

The bloke doing the speaking was lovely, buggered if'n I can remember his name, he was taking over a Church after spending some time teaching priests - or so I gathered. He talked at some length about how the Church was actually growing in the context of the wider world but shrinking within Western Europe. Thing was, it was a proper C of E thing. Lovely for being so too, I think.

I love the C of E, I really do, it's the Church that our society needs and wants, it'll fall over if someone blows hard at it and get lost in committee for years over silly arguments and will absolutely refuse to take a stand... except that now it's getting involved in the whole nasty abortion question... a mistake in my opinion, a rather nasty mistake too!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm as averse to killing things as the next man (I'm a vegetarian after all... though I've got to make an exception to fish!) but if some 13 year old lass has been raped by her Dad and was too scared to see a medic until it was near 24 weeks then I'd be all for her not having to bear a possibly monstrous mewling infant that'll remind her of a crappy period forever more. Get the kid adopted, I hear you say? Well there are all sorts of consequences to breaking that genetic taboo, that's why it's a taboo after all...

There are all sorts of valid reasons for not changing the legislation, not least of which is that if there is a requirement for late abortions then someone will provide them, I'd prefer them to be done in a hospital rather than in an alley somewhere with a rusty knitting needle.

I just came across this while checking the 24 weeks thing I said above: "British Conservative Party leader Michael Howard said he would push to change the abortion restriction from the current 24 months gestation limit down to 20 weeks if elected Prime Minister in the next election.". Now, don't get me wrong but are they really saying that we can abort our children some year and a quarter after they are born ? A perfect reason to not vote conservative in my opinion.

Progress... sort of ;-)

Did lots of interesting things last night, got to grip with the calculator function of google and also did some heavy duty (for me) math with triangles. I quite liked that bit actually .

Doing the math I realized that I needed to draw over a series of images that I'd cobbled together into a table so I used the excellent JavaScript Graphics Library from the divine Walter Zorn, that man is just a wiz! And with that I was able to put a transparent div over the top of the table with the images in and so overlay a vector over a bitmap image, cool ehh? The page I made can be found here and details a lovely walk I took on Saturday last (Though I did get very knackered and I'm still recovering really).

SVG Beating Heart

The ancestor of the ASCII Heart (Of course, being SVG it might not work in YOUR browser):