Just enjoy the snow!
It’s not often we’re blessed with snowman-grade snow in the South-East. Especially snow that warrants a Met Office Severe Weather Warning. In fact, the last time it snowed like this down in the South-East was – correct me if I’m wrong – about 18 years ago.
That long ago, I remember helping my Dad dig his car out of the snow, and building snowmen in the garden. What this weather has brought many is the opportunity to stand still for a short while; a brief period in our busy lives to stroll down the road, admiring the pretty white stuff that has made everything so, well, pretty.
What’s sad about this awesome weather event though, is not that it has caused so much travel chaos, but that so many are seeking to blame someone for the fact that the roads almost ground to a halt, all London buses were canceled and the trains stopped working. Really what these people are suggesting we do, when they compare our capital city’s response to countries such as Russia, Sweden and Canada is anyone’s guess. Do they really think we should pay good tax money into a pot each year just so that we are prepared for the once-in-every-eighteen-year event, that lasts just one day? And besides, the roads really were trecherous – and where I live, we saw gritters all day long – and it didn’t really help, the snow was coming down so heavy and so fast.
And, while I’m ranting, did these people all miss the weather warnings in the days beforehand? If it caught you unprepared, I really don’t know how. It was all over BBC News, Sky News and the radio. And, the Grape Vine. Why not just enjoy it while it lasts? Whether you like going outdoors in the snow or not, time to think is a rarity for most people these days, let alone some pretty scenerey for us inner-city larks. My fiancé and I went for a nice long morning stroll through the park, before we both started work at 8am. And that gave me the perfect opportunity to snap some snow pics (I’ve not had a chance to correct the lighting in these yet, so please bear with me!).
I, for one, was glad of something different for a change – especially something so pretty!
Chocalate Cake In 5 Minutes
Very rarely do I blog about anything not connected, in some way, to a computer. At the very least, it should have a plug attached to it. This post breaks that tradition…
A friend of mine sent me a link to another person’s blog, which describes a recipie for making a Chocalate Cake in 5 minutes, using nothing but a mug, some basic ingredients, and a microwave. What a miraculous discovery!
Thank you to Dizze-dee for sharing this awesome recipie! 
IE8 is here, but are the alternatives better?
I am an avid Microsoft fan – anyone who knows me, knows this. The problem is, these days, it is sometimes a little harder to fly the Microsoft flag proudly when those who yell about “standards compliance” and open-source are getting louder (and perhaps ‘cockier’) about the alternatives to Internet Explorer.
Should we be listening?
I think the answer is undeniably ‘yes’. Here’s just a few of my reasons:
- As a web developer, my job is to deliver the best possible web experiences, on time, every time. With the choice of browers growing every year, it is vitally important that vendors adhere to standards so that designers can produce sites that will work universally. This will make me more productive, because I will only have to code my sites once, and not worry about interoperability.
- Vulnerability. Firefox and Opera are about the safest browsers you can run on your computer these days (not including Link, of course!). Just today it was revealed that a serious flaw in Internet Explorer (going back quite a few versions) allows an attacker to run arbitrary code on your computer (but only if you visit a compromised site).
- Experience. I use a desktop PC at home and at the office, a netbook when I’m travelling, and a PDA. I have IE on all of these, but the experience differs on all of them. Firefox, on the other hand – is always consistent.
I, like so many of my peers, are huge supporters of web standards. We’re begging for them to be implemented in a standard way, and this is the problem. We want the ‘standard standards’, not tweaked versions. To be in the situation we’re in globally with the impending release of IE8, where we have a mode that we can enable to support websites created to work with IE7 and before, so that we don’t ‘break’ the internet, is absurd.
And to those of my peers who think standards are a bad idea, think again. If not for all the right reasons, then think about it from a selfish point of view: you’ll make your life several orders of magnitude easier.
Invicibility
Of course, I do not believe that browsers other than Internet Explorer are invulnerable to attack. It makes sense (I presume, and if you are a hacker) to target the browser platform that most people are using, as doing so will expose you to a wider range of potential victims and therefore yield potentially higher results.
But would I advocate dropping Internet Explorer in favour of one of the competitors? Put simply, I must say “no”.
Would you walk down a dark alley alone, at night, in a foreign neighborhood?
Yes, we can listen to the scaremongers who tell us that our passwords will be published in phoneboxes and our pets skinned alive, or we can take a sensible approach and weigh up the risks for ourselves. Do you hang out on dodgy web sites that are likely to be compromised? If the answer is yes, then bam – you just increased your risk of exposure far greater than mine.
Hang in there, there is light at the end of the tunnel
I won’t be ditching Internet Explorer. But if I ever did consider it, it won’t be because of the scaremongering or those who wear the checkered-shirts and hug trees: it’ll be because I’m growing tired of supporting a company whose browser offering keeps making my life that much more difficult every time they bring out a new version!
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