October 2003

October 25

It was nice to see that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone was among a select group of celebrities to board the Concorde for the final time on Friday, such is the mans significance.

Of course it was a very sad moment though, but with the BBC’s excellent live coverage, and the whole organisation of the event, I felt very proud to be British. It was a grandiose farewell.

After mentioning I would be over a month ago, I’ve now started work on East Bergholt Sports Centre’s future website. Howard, (my brother, and other half of Mitchell and Mitchell) has made all the arrangements with the client, while I’m purely doing the web design.

I’ve spent several few hour chunks working on it today. I always have some very frustrating times in the process, but once I’ve calmed down and had a snack I’m soon thriving on the next CSS challenge.

I’m quite satisfied with the way it’s going so far, I mean it’s only one page I’ve done, but the layout is the main thing; the time consuming bit. We’re not too sure what we’re doing with the header just yet though — the jury is still out — so I think I’ll leave it to Howard and Photoshop to decide!

This does mean that The Programme Covers Project has taken a back seat again sadly, but sometime this week I’ll get back to working on it full time again.

October 17

A couple of days ago I finished reading Man and Wife, which was a very good read. I wouldn’t say it was up to the standard of Man and Boy, but that was just faultless. Over the last few weeks I had been getting so used to reading again, just before going to bed. So when I finished my latest book, I was frustrated not to be able to read any more, as that was my last unread one. I’ve now since bought a new one though, so I can stay up a bit later again! (Late night TV is generally crap.)

After doing research on Amazon I came up with Ben Elton’s “new bestseller”, High Society which has had some very good reviews. After reading a good few pages, it seems interesting and in a different style to that of Parsons and Hornby. Needless to say I’ve added it to the side bar.

October 15

I’ve added new sets to the Tape Trading section of the site, which all come from trades done over the last few weeks (two tapes actually arrived this morning). Although I’ve not done many trades recently, there are still a lot added, because I swapped Data CD’s (with about 16 sets on them), rather than tapes which take a long while to record. I’ve another three on their way however, which I’m looking forward to hearing.

Like what happened to Villeneuve in F1, McRae in the WRC is getting the boot. So who should try and come to the rescue of the 1995 champion, but one David Richards: the person charged with sacking ‘97 F1 champ’, Villeneuve. Given that, I find it quite ironic that Richards should be supporting McRae, who is in the same circumstances as Villeneuve. Both are fast, both show undoubted commitment and both are out of a sport they love.

October 8

I’m very busy at the moment with The Programme Covers Project, in fact it’s taking up just about all my spare time. I’m still converting track pages to the “new” layout (uploaded in May) which is very time consuming and tedious to boot, but quite satisfying in the end. So far 248 done, another 293 remaining!

What I’m doing is effectively Data Entry, but from browser to Notepad rather than hard copy to database… I could really do with two monitors: one with the original track page on, and the other — where I would operate — with Notepad. That would be very handy indeed! Shame then that my laptop has no facility for that [if I plug in an external monitor I can switch between them or use both, but not as one].

And for the record I’ve updated the F1 Racing magazine cover under the menu, which I pinched from the official website.

October 5

Ever since the Sobig.f virus appeared some weeks ago, I’ve been getting tons (and if e-mails could be weighed, I’m sure it would be tons!) of viruses sent to me. Coming in all shape and forms, moving on from the original “Important” messages and the like, they went on to “Undeliverable Mail” messages, which some of which looked quite authentic, but then they would. The attachments of course didn’t though.

Then there were the ones warning of a virus! "500,000 have been infected already" or some such was stated, and you were instructed to run ‘patch.exe’ (how original) to prevent any harm. Come on!! You’ve gotta do better than that!

And they did! The next evolution of the “Virus Warning” was a mail from none other than Microsoft warning of vulnerabilities that could be abused if the attachment was not run (again I think it was the classic ‘patch.exe’). Adding Microsoft’s name makes it only slightly better, but these bastards went to the extra trouble of including Microsoft logos for added authenticity!

Now I was never at risk… that is I would never run one of these files, but thousands of course have done, and I don’t blame them. For someone not too clued up about computers to receive a genuine looking “Undeliverable Mail” return or seemingly authentic Microsoft Virus Warning, sure they’re going to run it. And this is really worrying — I just wonder what they’re going to think up next.

Tea, anyone?

October 3

I’ve added the ‘Reading’ and ‘Subscribed’ sections to the side menu, and as predicted, I have already finished How to be Good and moved onto Tony Parsons’ Man and Wife — which is bringing back very fond memories of the excellent Man and Boy.

The cover shown for F1 Racing isn’t actually the latest issue, but since my copy only arrived this morning, it’s not that out dated. Yet. When their website carries the latest issue cover I will snatch it and replace the “current” one. Once again Schumacher is on the front, alongside Raikkonen with the question in every body’s mind: Can Kimi do the Schu?.

On the subject of magazine’s, yesterday I bought Knowledge for the first time in months, coming with an excellent mix CD by Photek, which is one of only a few Photek mixes I have. Lots of big tunes are on it from the likes of Dillinja, Total Science, Teebee, Special Forces (which is of course an alias of Photek) plus more. I was very glad to see The End remix by Photek included, the original is just awesome, and the remix most definitely does it justice. Fabio was always saying on his Radio 1 show that it was never to be released… I’m so glad Photek changed his mind!