I was given the job of creating a pdf using FOP and XSLT yesterday and since I had never used either before to any great degree I had resigned myself to several days of googling but I managed to all but finish it today. It was surprisingly easy to get the bulk of the formatting done but due to FOP’s lack of support for widows and orphans the rest will be a bit harder.
I also had a lot of trouble trying to get “analyze-string” to work. I eventualy fudged a regex of my own using “substring” and it seems to do the trick
M203
Maths has started again. I have started M203 and handed in my first peice of coursework today. It looks like an interesting course and I am looking forward to getting stuck into it. It seems to be soaking up an awful lot of my time at the moment.
Valentines Day
I suprised Jenny by taking her to London to a concert at the Barbican Concert Hall. We seen the “Valentines Day Love Classics” and we really enjoyed it.
The Programme
Tchaikovsky Waltz from sleeping beauty.
Bizet Carmen Suite
Grieg Paino Concerto in A minor
INTERVAL
Offenbach Orpheus in the Underworld Overture.
Strauss Blue Danube Waltz
Delius The walk to the Paradise Garden
Verdi Prelude to Act 1 from La traviata
Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Suite
It was really good, my favourite piece was by Bizet.
There where a few smiles when the blue danube was played, this was because I had surprised Jenny on her Brithday two years ago by taking her to Vienna we spent some time on the Danube.
All in all it was a good night.
New Job
Started my new job today. So I think I might be getting very busy very soon. I am now employed as Assistant Webmaster at the Associaltion of Commonwealth Universities.
The sites that I am involved in are as follows:
ACU
Marshall Scholarship
Observatory
CSFP
All being well there might be a few other things to get my teeth into.
YAPC 2004
I have just been asked if I am going to go to YAPC 2004 (Belfast) in September. Considering its my home country I am probably going to go. I can also head home and catch up with the family. God knows who else is going to go and I am not really sure what to expect when I get there but the crack should be good.
Travel Costs
I have just found out that to travel from Luton to London Kings Cross yearly will cost me about £3000. Is it just me or is this an obscene amount of money to travel 45 miles in a crowded train. I know that the UK train service is in a state but wern’t we meant to be trying to encourage the use of public transport. I doubt very much if these prices are going to have people flocking to cram themselves like sardines into a train.
We really need to sort our raliways out. They’re part of the backbone of a good economy and with the state ours is in I am suprised we haven’t got a trapped disc.
Parrot and IMC
We are off up to see my sister in Norfolk in a couple of days time. It should be a good laugh. I have been trying to come up with a good way to bodge objects until we get them in IMCC. The best way I have found to date is name mangling but this is a pain in the ass. I have also considered containers but although easier to impliment it will not look much like objects by the time I’m finished.
Page Rank
I turned on Jenny’s PC today and noticed that I had a page rank of 5. Although how I have managed to get that is another matter.
I have noticed that the hits have been going up recently and I imagine it has something to do with this although I think people will quickly leave when they realise that there is not actually that much content up on my sites yet at least none of any noteworthy quality.
I have tried to add my websites to DMOZ a few times and so far I have had no joy getting any of them in anywhere. The first time I tried it DMOZ was not playing ball at all and refused to work????
DBDI
I have been talking to Tim Bunce about a DBD Interface for Parrot and it would be extrememly nice to get one for the Parrot release in Feb. However, this is unlikely due to IMCC’s lack of objects. We could bodge it in the mean time and fix it later but fixing things is always ten times more difficulat than bodging them in the first place.
14 Jan
Trying to get up to speed with Parrot and IMCC. It is proving quite difficult. There are rumours of a Feb release of Parrot, I am looking forward to seeing if it stirs up some interest. It is certainly a lot more mature than people give it credit for.