firetree.net

Ubuntu has an irritating habit of turning off Firefox’s middlemouse.contentLoadURL setting. Recently, it’s got even worse – whenever I turned it back on, Ubuntu would immediately turn it back off for me. So, today I finally worked out that the problem was Ubuntu’s “firefox extensions” – turned that off, and finally my contentLoadURL setting sticks…

Except, now I realise that the Firefox devs have crippled the behaviour anyway. The clipboard now has to contain a full URL, complete with the http://, or the middle click is ignored. Humph. What use it THAT??

OK, so I then found these instructions for hacking FF’s internals, to recreate the old behaviour. Amazingly it works, but I’m starting to feel that they’ve got it in for me.

I did this ages ago. I don’t know why I never posted it. Anyway, here’s an interactive timeline of Ancient Egyptian history.

Perhaps they have me mixed up with someone else?

We are very pleased to report that you are in the top half of OkCupid’s most attractive users. The scales recently tipped in your favor, and we thought you’d like to know.

How can we say this with confidence? We’ve tracked click-thrus on your photo and analyzed other people’s reactions to you in QuickMatch and Quiver.

Your new elite status comes with one important privilege:

** You will now see more attractive people in your match results. **

You’ll also be shown to more attractive people in their match results.

Suddenly, the world is your oyster.

And, no, we didn’t just send this email to everyone on OkCupid. Go ask an ugly friend and see.

The bigger question is, why am I on OkCupid, given that I’m happily married? The answer is that I use it to stalk my single friends. Satisfied :)

It must be nearly 10 years since I last saw Trystan. It’s a real shame, because I liked her a lot. I’ve asked everyone I can think of, and no one knows what’s become of her. So, Trystan – are you out there? If so, then drop me a line.

Republic of Rome is a great boardgame. Or at least I think it is — I’ve never really been able to play a proper game. The rules are so complicated, and so badly written, that I’ve never really felt I understood them. So, I decided to write a cheat sheet. One that would be useful for someone who is trying to learn the rules while playing their first game.

Republic of Rome: Cheat Sheet (PDF)
Republic of Rome: Cheat Sheet (Open Office)

Read the rest of this entry »

The UK’s Digital Economy Bill will introduce the concept of orphan works which may effectively abolish copyright on most photographs. Is this a foretaste of the future copyright in general? Read the rest of this entry »

confused.com is a price comparison web-site. They gather lots of information about you, and offer no way to cancel your account. They also take the opportunity to spam your e-mail address with lots of unrelated offers.

Avoid.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/PowersofArrest/

It just struck me that Alan Rickman would have played Denethor much better than whoever it was in the Peter Jackson movie. That idea has opened the floodgates… Read the rest of this entry »

It certainly doesn’t look like Spring out there tonight. I was going to cycle to work tomorrow, not sure if I’ll make it now.