A few changes around the back-end of the site:

• G-ZIP Enabled – If you have a relatively modern browser, then the site will now download up to twice as fast as before, thanks to the magic of PHP‘s built-in g-zip output buffering function. I’ve known about it for a while, but have been reluctant to activate it because part of Finetto uses it’s own output buffer. I thought they might be incompatible. I was wrong, both work fine.
• Pinging weblogs.com – I’ve started pinging weblogs.com and incorporated the functions into Finetto. Every time I updated, weblogs.com can tell others about it within 5 minutes (roughly how often it takes them to change their log file).
• There was something else, but I forgot so this point is useless. Ignore it.

Right from the outset, the most annoying thing about going to see “The Recruit” was having seen the trailer. Now, you might be thinking that if I thought the trailer was bad, then I shouldn’t have gone in the first place and should stop my incessant moaning. But you’d be wrong. I didn’t think the trailer was bad, but I suspected that it would ruin the film for me. And it did. The film has a final twist (although I’m sure you would see it coming anyway) that is revealed in the trailer.

“Surely a bluff,” I thought, “They wouldn’t give away the ending before anyone had seen the film.”

Oh, how I was wrong.

I won’t tell you what is revealed in the trailer, however. If you haven’t seen it, go watch the film; you’ll enjoy it more than anyone who has. If you have seen the trailer, then go see the film anyway. Sure, you’ll know what’s going on, but it won’t stop it from being a decent film.

But, Big Movie Studios: Stop giving away big plot points in the trailers. We don’t want to know!

Time is quite important to us all and something I’ve been thinking about a bit recently. Not in any really deep way, mind.

On Friday, my watch stopped. This, to me, is devastating. I check my watch constantly to make sure I’ve got enough time to do whatever I want to before having to go do something else (I’m watching the computer clock now to make sure I’ve got enough time to write this before going out).

Now being a Friday meant that I couldn’t get a new battery fitted until today (Monday). So I thought, “Hmm… wear one of your other watches”. What did I find? They’re all broken. I let them cut out one after another, moving onto the next without replacing the last. Stupid mistake! So, I had to endure a weekend of not knowing exactly what time it is. This bothers me.

Only yesterday, British Summer Time started, often shortened to BST. Now, that won’t mean much to most people, but losing an hour in bed means a lot to me, especially since I’ve been sleeping quite erratically recently. Why can’t we just keep getting an extra hour in bed? After 12 years of moving forward twice a year (instead of forward once and back once), things would end up working out.

Shit, why not move forward twice a month and we’d get the whole cycle sorted inside a year and get plenty of extra time in bed? Best plan of all time, if you ask me.

Anyway, the whole situation has worked out: I’ve adjusted to the hour stolen from me (still looking forward to getting it back in October), and two of my watches are now working.

In addition to changes made a few days ago, I’ve updated my style sheets again. This time I’ve removed elements common to both style sheets and all of my other style sheets. Basically, this amounts to all the CSS for the buttons I use, my margin-collapsing rules and other common elements being thrown together in one place to be used ad infinitum. Hooray for re-use!

Separately, I’ve made the margins for lists smaller, the text for them bigger and their headings (dt in definition lists) bigger. There are a few more little changes that won’t be noticed at all. This post is really just so I remember when I did what; feel free to ignore.

A man arrested for insider dealing has claimed he is a time traveller. In trying to explain how he went from $800 dollars to a portfolio worth $350m he claimed he was from 200 years in the future.

The full article adds some odd details but I, like others suspect this is an early April Fool’s Joke.