17th to 23rd April 2001 © Chris Hester 2001 Back

17th April 2001
Been messing around with my new digital camera after getting another memory card for it today. I finally tried the multi-shot feature, which is almost like a primitive form of video. Then I put the results into an animated gif. (Click on the image below to see the animation.) I feel like one of the early pioneers of motion pictures. Maybe I should make it black and white and add some scratches.

Washing animation

I also finished a roll of film in my old camera that had only 9 shots taken on it. Quite a job! Eventually, after taking in some crumbling architecture and other sights around the city, I completed all 24 shots. Took the film in to a 1-hour processing shop - my final roll of film!

Now I have a digital camera, I won't be paying for processing or films ever again. Plus I can now take as few or as many shots as I like, without having to finish a roll before seeing the results. Then delete the rubbish ones if I like. Or just use the camera to take test shots, like a Polaroid, without any worries over wasted film. Magic!



20th April 2001
I found out today that if you turn off JavaScript in Netscape 4, it also turns off style sheets! This is a serious problem for developers like myself, who still cater for that browser. Apparently, many users turn their JavaScript off to stop all those annoying uses of it on so many websites, for things like pop-up windows. I can certainly understand turning it off. But it's yet another feature of Netscape 4 that makes you want to scream.

This wouldn't be a problem, only it affects the stupid font bug in Netscape that reduces your style sheet font size by one. (So your text is comparatively larger in Internet Explorer, and smaller in Netscape.) A workaround is to use JavaScript. Hang on.... if someone turns it off.... d'oh!

Here is the relevant link to more details on this one:

Netscape tip: CSS font size bug, part 2

Check a fuller list of Netscape bugs and how to deal with them by going to the Little Green Footballs weblog site, and entering "netscape tip" in the Search field. Excellent stuff!



23rd April 2001
I've started scanning in some of the pictures I took with my last roll of film. Spent some time experimenting with the great filters in Paint Shop Pro 7 and came up with the moody image below. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Ruined shop

Beware - Old Pages Live On!
I discovered today at work that you can use certain search engines and find links to pages you thought had long gone! Some have been deleted and yet the address is still in the search engine's database - fair enough. But other pages are incomplete test files that I'd left on the server - the engine was picking them up! Agh! So the moral must be: delete unwanted files on your website, and keep everything up to date!