Benjamin

MySpace Tips

2008-03-22T00:52:00.002Z

A while back I shot off a quick post about some neat CSS tricks i had discovered that allowed you to turn myspace into practiaclly a 'clean slate' for you to do whatever you wanted with. After a few weeks of tinkering I turned my myspace profile into a page that looked how I wanted, not how Tom had decided it should look.

The post where i shared those little tips is very poplular with readers of this blog, so i have decided that I will start to write alot more myspace tips and tricks. First i need to update my Blogging software to something that looks a little nicer, then I will do my best to shoot off as many CSS and MySpace hacking tips as I can.

Also, anyone who is interested in finding out how I made my current profile show some support in the comments and if you guys are interested I will write a tutorial series showing you how it is done.

Thanks for reading.
Ben

Technorati claim

2007-08-16T23:43:00.000Z

Technorati Profile

Sawyers Hall College Leavers Assembly - Class of 2000

2007-05-27T21:44:00.000Z

The Leaver's Assembly at the end of the final day for the class of 2000. Mark and Freeman did their own rendition of Aerosmith's "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing".

V.K. also did a song with Woodrow. That footage has yet to surface on youtube yet though, so when it does i will be sure to post it here.

MySpace adds CSS Classes- Makes moving comments easy

2007-05-21T19:47:00.000Z

I just discovered new classes in MySpace's source code.

I downloaded Firebug a few weeks ago, its a very amazing developer tool for those of you that use firefox. I had seen a tool similar to this for Safari but i'm too cheap for mac; so I missed out. Then I found firebug, but this post is about myspace's newly added classes on their HTML structure so I will talk about firebug in another.
(Well, either the classes are newly added or I have never seen them in my searches through tutorial sites and the source code of my profile all this time.)
The reason that I spoke about Firebug is that this is what helped me find these new classes in myspace's markup.

Thanks to the new classes my code is now only this long, it much easier on the eye with the class names - you can probably work out what this code does.

<style type="text/css">
.friendsComments {display:inline; overflow:auto; position:absolute; z-index:9; background-color:none;width:600px; height:400px; top:100px; left:100px}
.friendscomments table {width:100%;}
.friendscomments img, .comments td {visibility:visible !important}
table table td.text table{visibility: visible !important}
.friendSpace {display:none;}
.latestblogentry {display:none;}
</style>

It moves and reformats the comments, and hides the friends list and latest blog entry. Amazing huh?

The three I have found so far are .friendsSpace which selects the Friends List, .latestblogentry for the latest blog entry and .friendsComments for the ... you guessed it, comments.

If you want to find the others, and you are CSS savvy download Firefox and Firebug. If you are not CSS savvy, then stick around, when I get some more time on my hands I will try and post some tutorials here on how to make your myspace stand out from the crowd.

I'm off to fiddle with my profile now, check out Ben Page on myspace to see the results of my current tweakage.

Realtime Energy Monitors.

2007-04-18T11:09:00.000Z

Due in 2008, the government is planning to give out free 'realtime energy monitors' to any household that requests them. These energy monitors will hopefully help all you sinners to save on electricity, and thus shrink your carbon footprint, by showing you a little chart of your energy use, hopefully flicking that guilt-switch and making you care about the enviroment. If you don't care about the enviroment, it is likely to show you something along the lines of kW/H too. Your electricity bill is worked out from them, so more kW/H means less money for you, and more for them. That may make you set your dishwasher to economy mode.

[Original Article: BBC News]

Streetboard

2007-03-29T18:52:00.000Z

BOO YAH!! I have 'stolen' some plates and trucks from a certain someone, so I nearly have a full streetboard. All i need is some bindings... oh and the actual crossbar.

*Rethinks* so all i actually have is the Trucks and two litte wooden squares. I suppose those bearing things look pretty expensive. Thank you snot, you are so kind. I'm a gonna attempt to bulid myself a crossbar, but it should be a laugh - as i have no idea where to start.

Cianara.

Free Oyster Card Wallets.

2007-03-22T13:19:00.000Z

Like art? Own an oyster card?
Well do I have the site for you. As part of TFLs "Platform for Art" scheme they have released three new Oyster wallets with Original Artwork made to go on them. I like the stripey one, but there are three to choose from and they are free, (I belive).

Click related article to take you there.

3 musketeers 3 musketeers.

2007-02-28T09:32:00.000Z

That makes 6 mmuusskkeetteeeerrss (technically, 33 but that is just being pedantic) in total. Me, Kat, Tim, Mike, Rach, Matt. We went and had an awesome time painting the town red a lovely shade of yellow. Why yellow I do not know.

Anywho Saturday was a day of days. Don't tell them, but I had been dreading the day that Mike and Tim met Kat. They are alright alone, but together they get a bit excitable.
Luckily I managed to stop Micheal from Mooning Kat's Dad as we overtook him at 63 in a 50 limit. No idea why they don't like the idea of Kat being in Tim's car. He's safe you know, bear safe.

Here's how it went.
We decided to go out and eat, something that we have mutually agreed as enjoyable by all. We got into Pizza Hut at about 8.30, but due to a combination of Micheal thinking Pineapple is 'gay' and nobody else caring what they ate, we somehow ended up with 4 large pizzas between the 6 of us. But we didn't actually manage to decide this until almost 9.10. During the meal some woman/girl type thing tapped me on the shoulder and asked me not to talk about nipples, how rude of her. Mike being mike took this as an invitation to shout said word repeatedly. Oh the mirth. We also made a Pizza called Peter. It was quite amusing.

...Some time later...

Some stuff continued to happen in pizza hut, but it was mainly the leaving of crusts and the wasting of parmeshan and salt. Onwards to the Cinematographic Parlour my friends. 23 is an awesome film, go see it. It'll do you good.

Sianara.

Fun with Black Holes

2007-02-27T18:59:00.000Z

Just a random site I happened upon in my travels. It's a really fab way to procrastinate. They call it attractors.

WinAMP vs iTunes

2007-01-23T01:07:00.000Z

So what's the deal? WinAMP or iTunes? I have looked in so many places and can't get a proper description of how the two differ. And when i use them my self...

Sorry, just looked at the 'post time' field. Its 10 past one and i should be sleeping. How very unprofessional for me to publish an unfinished job.

Creative Commons Search

2007-01-19T23:02:00.000Z

I just stumbled upon the Creative Commons Search. It's actually a pretty awesome site. Thought I'd share it with you. You can search for Images, Text, Blogs, Sound and even movie files that are licensed by the creative Commons licence. It uses some techno-magic to find pages that link to definitions of the CC licence and then show the media from that page; so don't trust it 100%, make sure you double-check the licence terms before using the media.

Power to the Non-Copyright Infringement.

Using Email to Post a Blog

2007-01-19T18:53:00.001Z

Golly gosh, isn't technology amazing?

I have just set up my Blog so that I can post to it even when I am not near a computer! Unfortunately for you that means reading things like this will be taking up even more of your time. Hopefully the picture-post thing works too. If it does you should be seeing a picture of a post-flap somewhere round here. (Geddit? Post... Picture... I'm sorry.)

Lets see what else works?
<b>Wow! Boldness Works</b> I assume. Theoretically, I can't actually preview this Post until I get back to a computer, but in reality the only way I have of sending email is a Computer, because I am far too poor to afford a smart phone or the like. Although when I get my iPhone (Yeah right) I'll be Moblog-ing it up all over the shop.

Playing the Wii

2007-01-12T23:36:00.000Z

Yesh indeed, to the left is a picture of me hugging the box to WiiSports. This is because I was so happy to get my hands on a Wii; not because the one I have ordered has finally arrived - I'm much more interested in the PS3, and infact haven't ordered a Wii at all. The main reason I was wanting to publish this photo of me looking rather gormless was to prove to my good friend Cec that I have played the Wii before him. You see, because he is pretty desperate to get his hands on one. I think he may have actually already played it now, but that's not the point, I can still pretend I beat him!

So Cecil, this post is for you, hopefully you are not too upset.

Please note everybody: I am a good person really, just I get these occasional malicious phases where I try to be mean, but usually fail.

Now I present to you my official findings of the Wii. After playing it for about an hour I think I have annoyed the rightful owner enough to be allowed to blog about it.

First things first, the Wii itself is pretty hot looking close up, what with the blue-glowing disc drive and everything. Kudos+4 for sexiness. I also thought it was a pretty neat feature that the WiiMote has an on button that you can use to turn on the Wii from the armchair, very handy for lazy people like me. The only downside is for the hour that I played the Wii I was on my feet and jumping around. I much prefer how the old consoles worked; you have to stand up to turn it on, but get to sit down while you while away the hours gaming your life away.
Now, as I'm not actually a professional gadget editor, and that it is 11.54PM I'm going to sum the rest up in an easy to read bulleted list. (Yes, the bullet points are for the readers benefit - in no way, shape or form am I being lazy.)

Pros:

Pick-up-and-play
Fun... That's always a good sign
The Opera Based Browser is Slick
Great for parties (I imagine)
If Wii is this awesome, how awesome will the other Next Gens be (Yes, I still haven't played the Xbox 360, I'm fighting back the tears as we ~~speak~~ type.

Cons:

Only played WiiSports
My wrist really hurts now
WiiMote doesn't do exactly what you want it to.
Actual owner of the Wii wanted me to turn it off so he could play 'Kingdom Hearts II' on the PS2. So the Wii can't be that good!

If you have other opinions of the Wii, please leave a comment!
Auf Weidersehn, mein Freund!

I never thought I'd say this...

2007-01-08T20:13:00.000Z

I never thought I'd say this but I love dentists! (Or at least my visit today). Normally when I go they nearly die when they look in my mouth, and then they proceed to cause me as much pain as possible. This dentist, however, seemed to be rather nice - and seemed to know what he was doing as well. After the dentist filled my tooth, it was agony, not the treatment, but the fact that I was asked to wait a whole hour (that's 60 minutes) without eating. I can't believe how hard it was, not that I was hungry, just the fact that I couldn't eat made me want to.
Now I am so happy that I no longer wince each time I bite with the left side of my mouth! That is why I love dentists.

And now for an update on my project of digitising my Journal for Explorer Overland 06. I've decided against a blog because I wanted a chronological order, and so I have chosen a googlepages website instead, I'm such a Google fan-boy.

Lob Lob Lob -- Ster Ster Ster

2007-01-07T19:59:00.000Z

This weekend was winter camp at Gillwell Park with my Explorer Group. It is the centenary year of scouting and it seems that they made more of an effort then the last time I went; Although that was three years ago now, so I could be mistaken.

I had loads of fun, mainly because we turned up with 5 tents, and the only ones that worked were the two that people owned personally, not the three that we borrowed from the district stores. Being awesome scouts, Unit M didn't let a little thing like the wrong poles for one tent - and no pegs for any others - get in the way of us having all the tents completely put up. Some people complimented us on our scoutyness, but one unfriendly chap shouted out "Hah! shit Niger" ... Well we didn't listen to him, because the tent was actually a shit Icelandic - the fool!!
We titled it an Icelandish (as in 'not quite', OH THE MIRTH!) and that name stuck, 'till about 10AM on the second day when we finally got out of bed. We stopped using the name then because the Icelandish ceased to exist; we were all far to tired to do anything heroic as the tent was knocked over and tumbled to the floor, instead we just stood in a daze and stared at it for a while.

I had great fun at the disco too. I just love it when I get to hang loose and have a good time. This is only possible at a Scout disco, where nobody judges you, even when covered in mud and dancing 'the Macarena' whilst everyone else raves. The evils who had deserted us to young lead with 3GP caught up with us in the disco, and I believe that it was Micheal who changed the word 'Monster' in The Automatics song to 'lobster'. Being the simple minded fool that I am I found this highly amusing and proceeded to substitute lobster and other related words into all the songs that I could that the DJ played. (Well do ya, do ya wanna lobster? - Franz Ferdinand) Stuart also joined in, and we both shouted so much that our brains and throats imploded.

The reason for the title is that we also were using many variations of Oggie-Oggie-Oggie at the weekend, giving us excuses to shout expletives and such. The obsession with lobster overflowed into here, stuart even told me he had a dream about a lobster getting shot. these are mainly here for my benefit but meh!

Middle-Middle-Middle; Sex-Sex-Sex
Shuttle-Shuttle-Shuttle; Cock-Cock-Cock
Poision-Poision-Poision; Berry-dartFrog-Sam
Unit-Unit-Unit; M-M-M
Unit-Uncle-Unit; M-Vladmir-M; and finally...
Lob-Lob-Lob; Ster-ster-ster

Well, it took me about four hours to write this, because I opened too many tabs in Firefox and forgot about it. I started at 19.59 and didn't stop till 00.00.

A new year!

2007-01-02T22:44:00.000Z

Well, the first post I made on this Blog took me such a long time and for the first few weeks or so said post intimidated me from posting here again. I didn't want to let on to you guys that I was in fact an idiot! The only readers are probably my friends anyway, as this Blog has no uses for anyone else at the moment. Not to worry, I have big plans; Movie reviews, Website Reviews, Advice Columns. Push-button publishing may be the best thing since sliced bread, but it isn't a wonder cure for my natural aptitude to not do anything useful!

Anyways, There is a lot to tell you guys! Christmas was quite fun this year - I can tell i'm getting old though (Yes, 17 is old!), I wasn't excited at all, and I even forgot to leave out a mince pie for santa. (Oh how I love mince pies!). I went to see lots of my family, and put on a lot of weight - that's not a bad thing, just a talking point. Christmas this year snuck up on me, and finding presents was hard, and I still haven't given Kat her christmas card, I keep forgetting it! It's not even that fun, but it is wrapped in sellotape so that she can't open it! GLEE!

Resolutions:
Here I will outline my main resolutions formally, mainly for my benefit.

Do all assignments
Keep my room tidy
Be nice to my family.

Never understood why people make resolutions. Do people enjoy spending the second week of the year already depressed that they have broken their resolutions?

It seems that these blog posts are going to be quite essay-like in length, hopefully soon the novelty will wear off, and I will post more fun stuff

Welcome

2006-12-05T23:58:00.000Z

I apologise in advance for any ramblings and whingeing that you will have to endure as you sift this blog for my pearls of wisdom. But I warn you now, they are few and far between...

Even those of you who know me may not realise this, but I like to think of myself as a warrior; one who proves to any doubters that the pen is far mightier than the sword. Unfortunately, some forty-eight words ago I started a sentence with the word 'but' (as per usual failing at the first hurdle).

I'm not really as defeatist as that last sentence makes me sound, but I do enjoy getting peoples hopes up with a well thought out first post, only to ramble on in the second post - two months later - about how my socks have holes in them and my nose is slightly cold.

Want to know more 'bout this blog? No? Well tough.

I like to think that I have geeky tendencies, but all my real friends tune out when I try to talk to them about the new website or software I have just found. This is my solution to that problem, by typing here I will have no idea how bored you are getting, and you can't prod me when I start to bore you so there! Anyway, I'm boring myself so i'm going to try and figure out how to post this thing.