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style syntax
by Nick Atkins 26 Jun '07

26 Jun '07

Would anyone be able to tell me why the following in-line style code does not work on IE6 or IE7? - the link colours do not render properly. It works fine on firefox and netscape7 and half works on safari. <HTML> <style type="text/css"> a:link, a:visited {color : white} a:hover {color : red} </style> <a href="http://cloudesley.org" > <img src="/images/cloudesley.org.png"> </a> </HTML> The result can be viewed here: http://cloudesley.org/new.html Many thanks. -- Nick Atkins

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User group meeting last night
by Ruth Bygrave 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

Alas, I didn't find what I was really looking for (very beginner hobbyist scripter to talk to about where to start)...but I enjoyed it hugely anyway, until the conversation at the end reminded me that scripting is really the province of Real Developers and Not Idiots Like Me...cause I didn't understand half of it! [long boring bit about why I want to try it anyway] My approach for why I want to dip a cautious toe into scripting is that what put me off Windows was that there was an infinite amount of choice in software but it was so commercially-driven that if what you wanted to do wasn't commercial it wouldn't exist. The Windows approach is, if you want to do something that isn't there out of the box, buy something. So what you eventually end up with is infinite numbers of programs that do the same as the other programs. You end up with a range of choice that is five million fishknives when you opened the drawer for a soup spoon. I doubt I could become a big professional developer doing big things, ever. I could see myself one day (in five years' or so's time, if I'm lucky) doing tiny back- bedroom projects as shareware or open-source, that started out as what I felt frustrated by not having on my computer -- and gain small amounts of money and big amounts of fun! My problem is that I feel very wary of talking to Professional Developers For Whom It Is Their Day Job. Not that they'd be at all unfriendly, but what would they gain from talking to Dumb Script Kiddie Who Iz A Idiot, as opposed to what I would gain, which is education and which I have the uneasy feeling I should actually be paying for (except that whenever I look up IT training I see big commercial operations that charge £700 for a week's training... which isn't really what I'm looking for). And I know Adrian's approach is that computer science courses at school (what I'd probably get if I looked at adult-ed, except the adult-ed courses aren't up yet at Suffolk College?) are generally rubbish at teaching people to program, and he's much brighter than I am. And I know my past is littered with failed attempts to learn simple programming (C++, VB, Delphi, XSLT...), which lasted until I tripped over Applescript when I switched, downloaded a bunch of free scripts, and managed to get over the mental block that there was nothing I wanted to *do* that I could find out how to do in real programming. So I'm at the point where I want to take a bit of a step back from clipping Mac apps together and come back to it later, and start more from-the-ground- up. But I don't want to bother Real Professional Developers because, they have coding at their day job and almost certainly don't want to give me a free education in their spare time (I get the feeling poor Adrian doesn't, especially since his spare-time recreation is currently rock-climbing and coding is his Work). And I certainly couldn't pay for an expensive education, especially the hundreds-of- pounds one!) So I'll go back to doing scripting on my own, reading books and posting snippets of bad code on the internet... (Incidentally, if anybody wants to read my silly personal-reactions- to-starting-scripting blog, it's at macrubyist.livejournal.com but so far it has about 4 readers. Am uneasily beginning to wonder if I'm not *quite* as chatty & entertaining as I think I am. And I have a bit of a problem with being *too* chatty and discursive, viz this note) [end boring bit about me, sorry, was a bit of a vent there but I just feel so *isolated* sometimes!] OTOH, the general idea that I could use the local Mac user groups for my consumer/user chatting and questions (about Mac-specific apps) and ALUG for geek-fu social chatting, validation that using Unix isn't actually Completely Insane, and learning about the open-source end of Darwin, sounds like it would work marvellously. And if anybody could help me sort out my Samba mixed-network problem that all Mac users look blankly at and say But It Just Works (even if it involves Pain & use of CUPS), that would be cool, although suspect that will have to wait until the About Mixed Networks meeting. Suspect am out on a limb a bit -- may be the only person in the entire universe who's too geeky to be *quite* a Mac-consumer and too dumb to be *quite* a winux lizard :-) But thanks for listening, anyway. I promise I'll start to shut up now, but suspect needed to vent after having nobody to talk to F2F about what I was thinking about for the last six months (as in, Adrian doesn't want to talk about Evil Devil-Languages, and has seen me fail a bunch of times at learning programming anyway, none of my friends do this stuff, and I've never found any hobbyist programmers at the same Dumb But Finally Actually Enthusiastic stage I'm at now...) R

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Re: [ALUG] IPLUG meetings
by samwise 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

On 22/06/07, Yvonne Everett <ye103910(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > Hi > > I see from the meeting notes for monday of last week that the homework > was to do 3 things. The 2nd item however (spend a day without using > the top five search engines) has me wondering what the top five are? > I can think of google, yahoo, altavista.... Who are the others? > > Von Ahh, my bad - should probably have specified that: Google, Yahoo!, MSN / Windows Live, Ask or AOL are the biggest five search engines (tho we're being kind including AOL on there ... :) I've updated the meeting notes entry too, with a link to the top 100 alternative search engines list for this month too, if you want to experiment! http://altsearchengines.com/2007/06/06/the-top-100-alternative-search-engin… Peter.

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Idle question about keyboard bindings
by Ruth Bygrave 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

One of the things that drives me insane about OS X is that I actually had to download a tiny home-made hack to get the keyboard layout I was used to (" on shift-2, @ next to ;, # next to return). Apple's idea of a British keyboard is: £ on shift 3, but all the others of those keys in what I think of as 'American' places. Adrian and I both instantly thought this was to do with Apple having such an identity as a Californian company it's too arrogant to get its localisations right. I whinged about this at the local Mac user group, and they all said it was the normal British keyboard layout. Is this because: a) the Mac users are not touch-typists. b) the Mac users grew up to use computers on the Mac platform, so they assume the Apple way is the normal way (my 'Apple imperialism' argument) or c) Adrian and I both spent 20 years on MS platforms before I switched to Mac, and the Mac users are right (their 'MS imperialism' argument). If any of you can remember the layout for typewriters before the IBM PC came along, it might settle the question, but also some of you are touch-typists and you're not using a MS platform, so that's another way of thinking about it. Who's right? Regards, R

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Library update
by Wayne Stallwood 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

Peter's (samwise) generous donation of 14 books (mostly O'Reilly titles) has now been added to the library collection. Existing registered users of the Library can log in and see the new titles added by clicking the link under the What's new section on the front page. http://ccgi.digimatic.plus.com/opendb/ For those of you who don't have a Library account you can follow the sign me up! link on the login screen to generate a borrower account. Also please remember that all existing users and any new users now have the facility to add their own books to the collection, essentially offering them for loan whilst still keeping them in your possession. However I take no responsibility for the safe return of these books, the agreement to return them undamaged is between the lender and the borrower all the Library can do is send gentle reminders of overdue books (if the lender has specified a maximum loan duration)

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Coder/codong services wanted
by Laurie Brown 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

Hi Folks, We have an important client in desperate need of a php/mysql coder, with some specific tasks to be completed. We've lost our usual incumbent, who was a freelancer, but we don't mind if this is a freelancer, or a small local company: quality and flexibility is the key. Interested parties please contact me by email at: laurie.brown_at_convergent-ict.com Cheers, Laurie. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Laurie Brown laurie(a)brownowl.com --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Aha!
by Ruth Bygrave 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

Suddenly realised what to do with the discursive/nattery thing about the endless rambling conversations both here and on my blog due to suddenly having A Social Life for the first time in years. Because I know *exactly* how annoying it is to have someone who's likeable and sympathetic and *won't shut up", because by now I've been on enough lists where that's happened. I should type into or clip into the LJ client, post it private, and squint and chop at it until it's slightly less overwhelming -- then e- mail it somewhere or blog it. It's a 'discipline problem', and the answer is achievable once I start lifting my fingers from the keyboard rather than posting 50 paragraphs at a time... Regards, R

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Apologies, all
by Ruth Bygrave 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

As you may have guessed, I'm hammering the keyboard far too much out of sheer relief at finding anyone to talk to about cross-platform issues that isn't welded to You Must Use A Mac vs You Must Use A PC, and having felt terribly isolated for the past n years. So I *am* sorry, I *am* trying to rein in my ramblingness, and I *will* find my level after a while and settle down a bit. Incidentally, my last too-long-and-rambling message told me it was thinking of bouncing because of a 'suspicious header'. What stupid thing does that mean I was doing? Regards, Ruth

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Re: [ALUG] Anybody else ever tried fast-user-switching as context-switching?
by Ruth Bygrave 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

On 20 Jun 2007, at 13:53, Richard Bensley wrote: > I have been a bit busy, so I am just scanning the list, but yes you > would find a lot better help in general with Linux guys and gals, and > since OSX is UNIX, you will find many including myself are mac users. Yes! I feel so validated! > I was surprised to find out MUGs even existed! My immediate reaction had been "I am now on the Mac platform, I need to find out where the Mac users are". But I kept falling over the advocacy-zealotry and the fact that everybody within 60 miles or so of me seemed to be Mac-ghetto rather than my (admittedly-untypical) switch pattern of "20 years Windows followed by crash-and-burn Linux switch-unswitch, followed by more Windows, followed by: what I actually want is Gorgeous Consumer Stuff and consistent UI to feed the dumb user and Unix to feed the beginner geekery. I shall get a Mac" I hasten to add that I did not crash-and-burn on Linux because I think it's invariably a Worse Operating System for Everyone than the others, but because I switched too early and far too fast with no advice or local support, and unswitched. Am currently giving advice on LJ to a Mac user thinking of Linux dual-boot that she will almost certainly find it an unrewarding experience because dual-boot works for almost nobody (I'm fairly sure that this is likely to be the case for Macintel as well, but have no actual data as my box is G4), and that she'd have far more luck buying a cheap secondhand laptop for Linux 'play' and 'switching sideways' so that she can retreat to the user-comfort-zone between fits of geek-fu. > Our meetings are the second Thursday of every month int he Reindeer > Pub > (dereham road) in norwich, but there is also an Ipswich group which > meet > every 3rd Monday I think?!? But of course you and Adrian would be most > welcome, conversations and topics (as you have proven) are vast! Went to the Ips group this week, and noticed that even though I couldn't get any help with the problem I _thought_ I was going for, the group is a far better fit for me personally than ghetto-Mac. May consider coming to the Norwich group for social reasons if I haven't frightened you off yet :-) Regards, Ruth

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clamav on etch and cpu usage
by Jenny Hopkins 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

Hullo there, Our server is running nearly constantly at 100% cpu usage, the culprit being clamscan. Server is running debian stable, so clamav version is 0.90.1-2 I see a bug reported here http://bugs.donarmstrong.com/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=425661 which seems to be for a later version so there's not much point in upgrading clamav. Has anyone else had similar? Should I 'downgrade'? Thanks, Jenny

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